XMen: The Savage
by cantcatchme
Summary: What would it have been like had Xavier turned against mankind along with Magneto? Who would fight him? Current chapter: Iceman
1. The Savage: Introduction

X-Men: The Savage

                Greetings, fellow beings, and thank you for your company.  I am the Watcher, and you have stumbled upon my presence.

                Can you imagine someone so important, so influential, that his life decides the fate of an entire planet?  Charles Xavier is such an individual.  The planet below has already seen what would have happened if he had died as a young man.  But let us think, what if he had lived, but his life in no way granted such an optimistic vision.  Yes, I am asking you to imagine, what if Charles Xavier grew to hold the views similar to the ones held by the man known as Magneto.

                Below, on that very planet, this is going to happen.  Conspiring forces have desperation to control the most powerful telepath in the universe, outside the Elders of course, but they have no chance of doing so at this point, not while he is so well known and well protected.

                So now they have devised a plan, they will strike when he is younger.  But time travel has rarely affected the planet in a positive way.

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                It had gone better than planned, all of the stuff that wasn't supposed to be able to be sent back was there when they arrived.  "Sir, if they survived to send this stuff back, doesn't that mean we had no real impact on the future?"

                "Try not to think about it.  All that matters is that it's here."  They had arrived right where they wanted: beside the first Weapon X facility.  It was abandoned after WWI, which left it there for anyone to break into.  "Okay, set up everything by nightfall.  The field squadron is going out to find him."

                They were referring, of course, to the now eighteen year old Charles Xavier.  They looked at the car that was according to the time they were in.  "How fast can this P.O.S. go?"

                "Our boys modified it to go as fast as a Porsche, but we probably won't want to seeing as how we'll either be bouncing through the woods, or going through a town."

                "But it won't take us two weeks to do this, will it?"

                "It shouldn't.  Now get your up to date clothes on."

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                They observed the young man trot out of the house, a girl wearing only a sheet peeked around the edge of the door and threw him his hat.  The blond looked deeply into the woman's eyes.  Soon, she mindlessly closed the door.

                "Who would have thought that Xavier would use his powers to get laid without consequences," Private Jackson said.

                "What else would a guy do with telepathy?"

                "He's walking away, get him!"  Commander Rippert was amused by their conversation, but they'd forgotten their task.  The two soldiers walked up behind Xavier and injected the fluid.  He was out within a second.  It was late, so they weren't noticed.

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                Charles felt the scar on the back of his head.  "What have you done to me," he pleaded.  He was wearing a blindfold and earplugs, and he couldn't sense anything, so he was going on blind hope that someone was in the room.  His hopes were confirmed when someone pulled out the earplugs; unfortunately, the blindfold remained.

                "Greetings, Charles; we've implanted a device that lets us determine when you can or can't use your powers."  It was an official-sounding voice, like that of a general.

                "How do you know who I am?  How do you know about my powers?"

                "We know a lot about you, but we weren't sure you were who we were looking for until we saw you… sampling the fine selection of New York women.  We weren't sure of your skill level, though; how have you gained so much control at the tender age of sixteen?"  Charles didn't give an answer.  "Probably poking around the mind of your step-brother.  That'll hurt you later."

                "I left home to get away from him.  He hates me.  I tried entering his mind to fix it, but it just made things worse."  Charles had decided that they might tell him more if he was cooperative.

                "We'll make sure that, by the time we're done with you, you'll be so well versed in the human mind, you'll be able to make people love or hate you no matter what the circumstances."

                "Who are you?"

                "We are a branch of the international group known as Hydra.  We've been trained in the ways of the telepathic mind so that we may pass it onto you."

                "Why?"

                "That is not important.  All that matters is that you want to get stronger, is that true?"

                "Yes."

                "Good.  We will begin your training tomorrow."

                "What about my life?"

                "We're your life now, and for the next ten years.  After that, you're free to do whatever you want."

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                Training involved daily torture.  Charles' anger brought out the immensity of his true power, only to have it shut off right when he'd done what they asked of him.  He grew to hate those training him, but they truly were bringing out the best of him power-wise.  If he ever hoped to be rid of his captors, he would have to endure their torture until he could overload that damn chip.  He'd heard them talking that he'd almost done it a few times.

                He'd also heard them speak of who they actually were.  However unbelievable it was, they had traveled through time in order defeat their rival organization S.H.I.E.L.D. in order for them to take control of the "mutant crisis;" a term that they called him on several occasions, and since there was a crisis in the future, logically, Charles assumed that there were more like him.

                Because of their pushing his power, Xavier went unchallenged as the most powerful person on the planet until he was sent to destroy the facilities for the "Weapon X" project, a subsidiary of S.H.I.E.L.D. that he later found out trained other "mutants" in a similar way.  The tree trunk of a man that they had altered practically had a lead box around his mind, preventing Charles from simply shutting down his mind.  Every time Xavier tried to just suspend him in the air, he hooked onto something with the three foot metal claws they'd shoved in his arm.  He was too nimble to be hit by psionic energy blasts, and he could jump to the roof, so it was difficult to float away from him.  Charles eventually knocked him out by sending a huge piece of metal towards the beast.  It took him about three seconds to regain consciousness, and, ironically, three of his friends showed up.  Xavier managed to collapse the building, which was his actual mission, but the four soldiers survived.  That was just another reason to increase his torture when he got back to base.

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                They'd let him go.  He'd long blown out the chip that suppressed his power, but he'd kept in line to make sure that he could expand his power and experience.

                While they thought that the chip was activated, he was reading their minds.  They hoped that they had conditioned him to work for their cause, seeing as how they gave him his daily "S.H.I.E.L.D. is evil" brainwashing.  But they had failed.  He knew he was part of a race, a race that even people from the future underestimated.  Along his experience the Weapon X project, and the information gathered from such expeditions, he knew that there were more like him, and the number increased daily.  This was a race of power and diversity: both of which are qualifications for a grand army.

                They gave him the choice to do whatever he wanted, so he killed them.  Next, he went out, getting rid of ten years of sexual frustration.  He walked the streets of New York, noticing that they were too crowded; crowded with _them.  He'd been to a meeting of the House of Representatives, and he heard the thoughts of those privileged enough to know about mutants.  They hated them; feared them.  It wasn't only those who sought to use mutants that treated them negatively, it was every human.  They were scared, expecting that they would lose their own world.  And since Charles was a gentleman, he decided to give them their expectation._

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Up next: Wolverine.


	2. The Savage: Wolverine

Note: In this time, Scott never lost control of his powers, thus not earning the name Cyclops.  He can also shoot many beams at once in many different directions.  Also, I won't be using many codenames except in rare cases, such as Wolverine, since he got that name during Weapon X, and Gambit, since that was a nickname of his on the street.  And Jubilee because I don't like to type out Jubilation.

X-Men: The Savage

Wolverine

                Flashes; he'd gotten so damn tired of them.  Every time he slept, he'd get snips of his past that answered nothing.  Those blurry images weren't nearly enough to answer any questions, and it was rare that he heard any voices.  "His real claws aren't good enough," he heard that one in a few dreams, "Hydra's got a mutant of their own.  He needs more reach."  He guessed that was also in relation to his claws.  He had control of three muscles in each arm that shot out his massive claws, each one weighing fifty pounds.  They were released in three stages, a foot at a time.  The first stage was the outer-most stage, the second in the middle, staring to become sharp along the bottom, and the third became the actual claw.  He had one in each arm.

                They had proved useful during his life.  He could take out anyone, he'd even scratched Captain America's shield, back when Cap was alive.  That sliced star became more recognized than the shield itself, and the U.S. government had been searching for it since his death four years ago.  Too bad they didn't look at the base of the tallest tree in the forest that Wolverine mostly frequented.  Damn super soldier shouldn't have asked for a rematch.

                Unfortunately, he had to go into seclusion even deeper than the one before that incident.  That forest became his home, and because most of it wasn't needed, his mind began to slip away.  He was an animal.  In the past, he was too busy keeping himself alive, but nobody had even come close to finding him the dense forest that had damn near covered the state of California after it had been leveled in the sixties.  A bunch of scientists wanted to recreate the redwood forests that had been destroyed, and used some chemical to make it all grow back in a matter of years.  The chemical took too well.  Trees started breaking through cement, which made up about ninety percent of L.A., so the rebuilding effort ceased, and the trees were just allowed to grow.  This gave a lot of space to hide out in.

                It became a challenge to hunt, since the animals had long since learned to stay away from his scent at all costs, but he didn't go hungry by any means.  But Logan had recently noticed that something was following him, looking at him.  It was a woman, something he hadn't seen in quite a while.  She was a spy, and a psychic.  She had prevented him from smelling her until she was able to hide.  How she'd gotten past his mental defenses was a mystery, and required Logan to make his unwanted return to humanity.  He had to think, and pay attention to everything around him.  If she could prevent him from smelling her, she could do the same for seeing or hearing her.  She was good, after four weeks of smelling her after she'd already been gone, he never found out where she was.  After that fourth week, she stopped coming back.  She must have gathered all the information she needed.

                Logan got back to his normal routine.  Returning back to a state of relying completely on instinct was harder than he thought.  He renewed habits that he'd dropped in order to be more primal back when he first entered the forest.  Such as building a fire.  The California winters weren't too cold, and he had some heavy coats in case it did get cold.  Also, raw meat is easier to get used to than most people would think.

                As he watched the fire burn, he resisted acknowledging the very bad spy trying to hide behind him.  He was downwind, so Wolverine couldn't pick up the smell.  "You know I'm here," the man called out.

                "Didn't want to embarrass you," he spoke for the first time in a few years.  His voice was grainy, just like the old days.

                "There is no need for sarcasm, Wolverine."  The older gentleman floated peacefully in the air.

                "Are you the one who sent the girl," Logan asked the stranger.

                "Girl?"

                "Guess not."

                "I am here to ask you to join us.  You are no longer in danger."

                "You mean no more danger than any other mutant?"

                "We can protect you," he offered.

                "I don't need protection."

                "Things have changed since you've disappeared Logan.  Three fourths of the country is a war zone.  In other countries, it's worse.  Any remaining cities have been broken into mutant and human districts; humans getting the majority.  If you are in the wrong part of town, you will be taken forcefully to the crime-filled mutant sector from which it is illegal to leave, if you aren't blown apart by a group of ignorant policemen."

                "You say that as if I'm leaving."

                "You are either coming with me, or you will be less one set of adamantium bones."

                Logan didn't receive threats very well, "How do you plan to get that close?"

                The man just smiled.  Logan felt his bones begin to lift in the air, his body, of course, following.  By reputation, he'd identified his captor as Magneto.  "Who said I needed to get close?"

                "What good am I to you dead," Logan asked.

                "What _danger_ are you to us dead?"

                "Us?  So I guess you're still number two under Xavier?"

                The metal in his forearm stretched a little, "Do you think that makes me any less dangerous to you?"  Just a second after he said that, a medium sized rock floated up to be level with Wolverine's head.  Logan had no idea what was happening, but Magneto seemed to get the message in it, and released Wolverine.  By the time Wolverine looked up after landing, Magneto was gone, and a very strong scent of yet another man that Logan did not know took his place; he took special care of committing it to memory.

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                His position was compromised, and he needed to get the hell out.  It was big forest, and to the east, a desert.  By the time that he reached Las Vegas, or what was geographically Las Vegas, he was starving.  The city that stood before him was a broken dream.  In the sweep over the nation that the F.O.H. took, Sin City was the first target.  None of the casinos discriminated against mutants; gamblers were gamblers, and thus they were customers.  This acceptance was hardly tolerable by the standards of the Friends of Humanity.  When the casinos started complaining that the lost customers on the "human side" of town, and bankruptcies or abandonment were rampant in the "mutant sector" due to the fact that they were only ten percent of the population; the F.O.H. chose to eliminate the problem Las Vegas posed instead of dealing with it.  It became an example, a shining illustration of how blasphemy not tolerated by the new government, church, and police force of the United States was dealt with.  Some of the buildings were still smoking.

                But even though the population had dwindled, mutants stayed, and had tried to take over the abandoned Human Section of the city.  The idea of mutants being in control was a living Hell to the F.O.H., so the police force stayed as the only human population.  Logan must have met about half in his little run-in with them.

                "Stop, Mutant," the loudspeaker nearly ruptured his eardrum.  Logan managed to see the source of the voice through the blinding spotlight.  It was military type van, and it was rocking with the movements of the van getting ready.  The movement of the van rocking reminded Logan of an old saying.  He couldn't help but smirk.  This was of course taken as a threat by the police force.  They stormed out of the van, guns pointing straight as his head.  "Freeze, Mutant!"

                "My name ain't Mutant," he said angrily.

                "Identification," the man in the front asked.

                "Don't have any," his tone was more one of warning at that point.  There was no way fifty guys were going to be a problem for him.

                "You're in big trouble, freak," one of the officers said.

                "The name ain't Freak either."

                Scans from the van showed no other mutant for six thousand feet.  The soldiers realized the numbers were on their side, and thus relaxed.  "Perhaps you'd like to tell us your name," the man in charge walked up to Logan, showing off his significant height advantage, a mistake others had made in the past.

                Logan looked up in the man's eyes; "Wolverine."  Memories of the profile flashed through Sergeant Connors' eyes, but it was too late.  One of Wolverine's claws was completely extended, impaling Connors.  The other claw crashed against the first as Logan shoved it through.  The officers looked on in horror, too shocked to move as Logan held the still dying man over his head, skewering him.  It wasn't until Logan separated the skewers, ripping the man in half, that the officers started attacking.  Several blasts hit him, but he had healed by the time he'd finished ripping through the group like a scythe through wheat.  He walked away from the slaughter field wiping the blood off of his face.  Before he could think about it, the van sped away; Logan had thought that the driver had been several of the pieces, but it didn't matter now.

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                Within days, the image of Wolverine ripping that cop apart was a symbol of for both human and mutant extremists.  That damn driver caught the point when Wolverine's claws struck the ground, creating sparks, and the man's blood still hung over him like a cloud.  Human's posters and billboards everywhere read: "Think you're safe?  So did he."  The picture was in the middle, and below that was, "Power corrupts the Savage."  The message wasn't as direct as what Logan expected considering the writers were a bunch of hicks.  It did, however, disregard the fact that barely an attempt had been made to subdue him; this was as he suspected.  Nobody, and no group of people thought that they could take him out.

                This was overshadowed by the fact that he couldn't go out anywhere in a Mutant Sector without ten thousand people jumping up his ass wanting him to be the spokesperson.  They had their own billboards reading, "He's fighting back; what's stopping you?"  While neither of the slogans was very inspiring, it was mostly the image.  Like anything those days, it was either blown way out of proportion or turned into propaganda, sometimes both.

                It didn't matter, though.  Either way, he wasn't going to be able to just walk around anywhere; as much as he regretted it, he'd have to go back into hiding, just to keep from being hassled everywhere he went.

                "You're too far into this war to go back into hiding."  The fog was lifted from Logan's mind, and he could tell that she had been following him for a long time.

                "How do you get into my mind?  Not even Xavier could do that."

                "Xavier tries to use raw power to get into a blocked mind, but I use finesse.  A mind is like a computer, and I am but a lowly hacker."  She came out of the shadows, giving him an image to go with her voice.  She was very… white.  She didn't have any hint of a tan, and everything she wore was white.  But based on how much that white clothing covered, he guessed she wouldn't be able to honestly wear it at a wedding.  "If my husband only knew what you were thinking," she angrily said.

                "Speaking of which, you shouldn't know."  Before she was able to respond, he pulled an old trick he learned a while back.  He didn't know the specifics of how it worked, but he'd put three psychics in comas from doing it.  All he felt was a slight ringing and a fizz in his head, the psychics never lasted long enough to tell him what they felt.  She caught on to what he was going to do before it could have had any substantial affect, but for the split second she held her head in slight pain, he charged her.  Within a second, he had her pinned against the wall with his claws ready to cut her head off.  "Why have you been following me," his breath poured over her face.

                "I was ordered to," she answered with a face twisted in anger.  His arms were quickly pushed away from her neck.  He couldn't match the strength of her telekinesis, and was soon afterward lifted in the air, suspended by an invisible force.  The alley was too wide, and he couldn't reach anything in order to pull himself back down to the ground.  He quickly started trying to think of ways to get out of this.  His entire body was being held, and his arms and legs were frozen into position.  It was easy to see that she'd been trained to fight him.  "What Trent sees in you, I will never know."

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                Trent, the guy that the really white woman was working for, just so happened to not be in when they arrived at his house.  He did, however, leave Logan with a mission.

                "Who the hell does he think he is," Logan screamed.  "He has you drag me here, and then he gives me orders, the last person that did this to me ended up with a three foot claw up his ass!"

                "If you just do this one simple job for him, he will protect you," she tried to calmly explain, but Logan would have none of it.

                "I don't need protection!  If this guy was interested enough in me, he'd have known that."

                Emma was about to let go of the lady part of her keeping at least one side the conversation civil.  "Ever since Xavier found out where you were, you've been thrust into this war… on our side, whether you like it or not."

                "Is your side ripping cops apart?"

                "Our side is self defense of other mutants against the cold bastards that have taken over this country."

                "And when you've 'defended yourself' so much that seventy-five percent of the human population is gone, what happens then?"  Emma was quiet.  "I've heard about you people in the last couple of days.  You want peace between humans and mutants?  That's bullshit.  You're going to have to wipe out all of the humans that hate us, and then we'll be the majority, and Xavier will take over."

                "Xavier is our main enemy, along with his followers.  And it doesn't matter whether or not you believe in our cause, one way or another; you're going to be fighting for us.  Xavier hates you; Magneto was ordered to bring you back so that Xavier wouldn't have to go through the trouble of leaving his base.  You're one of two people that have ever stalemated him in battle, and he'll send all of his little mutant soldiers after you until you're close enough so that he can do it himself, and when that time comes, he will rip you apart.  Xavier's power has grown in the last fifty years, and your only hope to stay alive is to ally yourself with Trent."

                That damn fight with Xavier was the only thing Logan could remember clearly from his past.  "There's always more than one way to survive."  Logan walked around her, hoping that he would be able to find the exit in the huge mansion he was in.

                "How are you going to fight Xavier when you couldn't even beat me?  He's ten times as powerful as I am.  He can warp and bend reality at his whim."  This was Emma's last attempt to keep him in the mansion.  The door to the library was slammed shut.

                Outside the door, Logan was confronted with a very large man playing with a young child.  He'd seen the guy when he was being carried in, the girl had called him Peter.  Upon seeing Logan, he told the child, in a heavy Russian accent, to stay in sight, and walked up to Logan.  "I don't need to hear another speech from a stranger," Wolverine informed the nearly seven foot man.

                "Given the circumstances, and your apparent haste for departure, I would disagree."

                "Well, it's none of your damn business."

                "I do not think as such.  We're in a war, and I have the ability to keep a very powerful weapon on my side.  Is that not my business?"

                "Not when that weapon has free will."

                "Of course, but where will your free will take you?  We know what places and what people to avoid; do you?"

                "It doesn't matter," Logan was getting sick of these people questioning his abilities.

                "I believe your time away has caused a gross underestimation of our enemy."

                "Your enemy," Logan corrected.

                "You are in this war, Logan.  It is a fact you will have to face.  Neither Xavier nor the Friends of Humanity want anything to do with you.  We are your only option."

                "You?  The two of you, and this glorious leader of yours?  That's not much of an option."

                "You will have to forgive Bobby for not being here, and Trent is more powerful than you can possibly imagine.  Besides that, our numbers will be growing shortly.  You are but the first choice out of a number of very powerful mutants that remain to be… free agents, for lack of a better term."

                "And just why am I the first pick," Logan was more curious than he would have liked to admit.

                "Rumors say you can't die, and there is nobody you can't kill.  Not many people can attest to fighting off Apocalypse."

                "If I'm so damned important, then why ain't this Trent guy here?"

                "There was an emergency."

                "Too bad for him," Logan began to walk away.

                "You have no idea of the danger you're putting yourself in," Peter called after him.

                "You'd be surprised, bub."

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                Logan had no idea where he was, he couldn't overtly walk the streets, some militant organization wanted him to join, and two others were trying to kill him.  "The story of my life," he spoke to himself.  After a few hours of walking, he determined he was in New York.  He reached New York City just minutes after realizing the state.  He resorted to the back alleys, avoiding the police.

                All around, there kids trying to keep wet in the blistering heat.  He realized that he'd missed an entire cultural era.  The time he was in the forest was the time when it was too dangerous to raise a child anywhere, especially the city.  That era ended just a few days before Logan left the forest.  Those were the days when all the mutants were gathered and crammed into a corner of the city that used to be filled with violence and brutality, and the human inhabitants of those parts were given all the money they could ask for and a nice house.  Meanwhile, the mutants had all of their earthly possessions taken away from them, and the murder of a mutant for fun happened often, and mostly wasn't even dealt with as a crime.  The police would find the bodies and leave them there.

                Logan beheld the only side that the F.O.H. would show, the safety of the children, the human children.  Even if they did show mutants rotting in the gutters, there wouldn't be enough people to sympathize.  Everyone hated mutants, and none of them could give their opinion as to why.  They'd quote some bullshit statistic and claim that mutants were savages.  Most of them had never even seen a mutant.  Logan took all of these as facts, nothing more, nothing less.  They were simply another set of truths that laid down rules by which he didn't abide.  Laws meant shit to him; if he couldn't find a good reason not to do something, he'd do it, other people's opinions be damned.  That's probably the reason why he got in so much trouble.

                Speaking of which, he could smell a bit of trouble coming.  Two people, indicating that they were mutants, were trying to get the drop on him from the roof.  By the time the two redheads descended from the roof, both ready for a fight, there was nobody waiting for them.  "Where is he, Jean?"

                "I can't tell.  Charles told us he'd be hard to probe."

                "Keep an open mind."

                "Why don't you just blast the whole alley?"

                "Good idea," even though Jean was serious, there was a bit of twisted humor behind the request, but of course, Scott took it as a completely serious suggestion.  A suggestion that he followed without delay.  Within ten seconds, fifteen buildings had been leveled.  Jean telekinetically shielded the civilians, however much it disgusted her to do so.  Magneto had told them not to do anything that would cause "The Inferiors" to attack prematurely.  They would usually reject such a command unless it came from Xavier himself, no matter how much they respected Magneto, but he stressed it so much.  They had come to the conclusion that he would be in a dangerous mood if the order wasn't followed.

                Jean surveyed each of the people she'd shielded to make sure Wolverine wasn't among them.  Most of them were children who would be brainwashed into hating an entire group of people who were their better.  It was pitiful as she looked at the weaklings as she released them from the protective bubble.  They had been saved by a mutant, and she could see in their eyes that they weren't as strong, but she could tell the ones that would be bragging about almost hitting her.

                The final bubble she approached had a very large, very scared man in it.  She dispersed the bubble, but the man didn't budge.  She could feel his fear, too much fear.  A small man ran out from under the large figure, and three feet of adamantium was being swung at her neck.  She managed to push the arm away telekinetically, and then narrowly had time to do the same to the next.  A red beam came to her rescue as the first claw was coming back with a vengeance.

                Wolverine was smashed into what remained of a wall.  By the time Jean and Scott got over to where he should have been, he had disappeared again.  "How the hell is he doing that," Jean asked.

                "This is what he was trained to do."

                "And I guess the last two years of our training aren't worth shit?"

                "The only advantage we have is our powers.  We're no going to be able to outfight him, so keep him in our sight at all times."  It was ironic that shortly after he said that, Wolverine pounded a foot into his back.  Now, Logan didn't have advanced strength, but the way Scott flew would argue differently.  A metal laced fist found the base of Jean's neck, disabling her for the next hour or so.  Scott wouldn't go down so easily.  The first injury his beams caused was still healing, but the second through fifteenth somewhat overloaded him, seeing as how they all hit simultaneously.  It was in a desperate attempt to avoid the maneuvering beams that Logan managed to hit the blunt end of his left blade against Scott's temple.

                "Scott," a voice came from his waist, "speak to me."  The voice was unforgettable.

                Logan bent down and picked up the small communicator.  "You'd better find a new target, Xavier."

                "Trying to avoid the battle, Logan?  I never figured you as a weakling."

                "The last person who tried to get into my business ended up dead."

                "I feel insulted being compared to the human who tried to gain superhuman powers while avoiding the harshness of the life of a mutant."

                "Who's being weak now?"  Before Xavier had a chance to respond, Logan dropped the comm. unit, and crushed it with his foot.  He turned to the two downed bodies, contemplating whether or not to kill them.  But he heard another police van coming, and he'd experienced enough infamy in the last few days.  As much as he hated to do so, he ran.  He didn't get far.  After about sixteen strides, his neck snapped without reason.  An injury he could recover from, but it knocked him out nonetheless.

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                Xavier and Erik looked down at the stout, burly man shackled to an adamantium chair.  "It's foolish to not kill him now, Charles."  Magneto had, for a long time, been speaking down to Xavier every so often, but he knew when to stop pushing; Charles could be dangerous if someone questioned his integrity too much.

                "I like feeling the fear in my enemy's eyes when they die," Charles quipped.

                "Sayings like that make me feel that the war has gotten to you."

                "Do not mistake hatred for insanity, Erik.  I feel no compassion for humans or anyone who fights for them."

                "And how has he fought for humans?  Had we not attacked him, he might even been on our side."

                "He will either die by our hands, or get in our way by allying himself with Reign," Charles spoke as if he didn't believe himself.

                "He remained neutral up until a few weeks ago."

                "Frost was in the forest spying on him, and Reign himself was there when you tried to bring him back."

                "I thank you for informing me now."  That was the last thing said before Erik took his leave.  He'd pushed Xavier further than most would advise, but it didn't matter.  Charles was too busy thinking about ways to torture Logan to death, so he wouldn't stay angry for long.  But anger quickly rises when one looks down on slaughtered guards and a chair that's supposed to have someone in it, but doesn't.

                Looking left, Charles saw that six of his security cameras were down.  They were scattered around the building, making Logan's path impossible to trace.  "Clever boy."  Charles was the second telepath that day to have a claw narrowly miss his head.  He launched the attacker backwards, slamming him into the concrete wall.  But no body was left for him to gaze upon.  Instead of taxing himself by running after Logan, Charles wiped out the three walls surrounding him.  Logan was struggling to get out from under the pieces of the wall; he was aided by a telekinetic force forcing him to crash through the wall behind him.

                "What's going on," Magneto screamed as he approached on the scene.  A large chunk of the ceiling lost its constitution and began to fall around the master of magnetism.  Xavier had to push a few of the chunks to prevent them from crushing his partner, who's reaction time had been dwindling due to his age; he couldn't activate his shield with any speed.  The lack of concentration allowed Logan to escape yet again.  Any wall within fifty feet found itself in pieces shortly thereafter.  "Not that I don't appreciate the help, but would you please desist in ripping our primary base apart."

                "Go find that animal!  We can't afford him revealing this location."  Charles was more disturbed than he probably should have been.  "Use any means necessary!"

                "That would involve tearing this base down, and then it wouldn't matter if he escaped."  Magneto was probably calmer than he should have been.  But a man with a metal skeleton wasn't too much of a threat to him.

                "Stop wasting time!"

                "Very well, Charles."

                Magneto began searching the halls for the wild man that, for some reason, drove Xavier to the brink of insanity.  Left and right he could feel the electrical signals from security cameras being cut off.  The large number of other electrical signals, however, preventing him from tracking the source of the disconnections.  Suddenly, though, he felt a massive power increase in the main line.  That could only be caused by an overload in the primary generator.  Very quickly, even at the sake of the walls in his way, he made his way towards the generator.  The walls passed by in seconds, but when a human figure hit his shield, he stopped dead.  It was Beast.  "Who said you could leave your lab?"

                "All of the guards watching over the generator are dead.  I was heading down there to shut it down."  Beast's eyes widened as he looked at something behind Magneto.  Wolverine's left claw nearly cut off Magneto's ear.

                Logan cussed himself for missing so many important slices in one day.  "Must be gettin' rusty," he said as Magneto held him in place, floating in mid-air.

                The entire building quaked as a crash came from the direction of the generator.  "Shut it down!  Quickly," Erik barked slightly nodding his head to let Beast recognize that he was the recipient of the order.  Hank bounded down the halls, and was soon out of sight.

                The next crash they heard was Xavier crashing through the wall.  "Why is McCoy loose?"  Charles lost interest in the answer once he saw the reason why Magneto was standing still.  The magnetic control over Logan was released, only to be replaced telekinetic bindings.

                The large metal doors had a gaping hole in them: the entry point and calling card of Wolverine.  The sight that could be seen through the hole was one of despair.  The main support beams had been cut through, thus the ceiling had collapsed over most of the control panels and other exits.  The remaining panels had been torn to pieces by Logan.  "Oh, Dear."  He began making as lengthy bounds as he could muster toward the nearest exit.

                "You have placed us in the middle of a time bomb, Logan," Charles was closer to Logan's face than anyone had been in about twenty years.  "That's too bad, because I can't waste time killing you in any way to satisfy me without having enough time to escape.  You'll have to die as a result of your own actions."  The back of Logan's head soon became acquainted with a wall twenty feet away.  Magneto and Xavier plowed their way through the many levels and erupted out of the top.  As quickly as they could, they floated a healthy distance away, and watched the explosion.

                "Let's get to our secondary base quickly; before Reign shows up."  They renewed their speed toward the underdeveloped base they never thought they'd have to use.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Logan was covered under tons of rubble for hours, perfectly conscious, listening to the other survivors trying to claw their way through the rubble.  There were a few more collapses until only one other survivor was left.  He was quoting Shakespeare in the little bubble that happened to form right over him.  All Logan had to be thankful for was the adamantium on his skull preventing the corner of a piece of rubble from driving into his brain, or through it, probably.

                After what he guessed was three hours, the rubble above was being moved.  Not heaved around or rolled off, but it was being lifted off and thrown on the ground nearby.   The light burned his eyes briefly after the final debris was lifted off of him.  His stomach, which had a few rods through it, began to heal.  As Logan stood up, he saw a tall, muscular figure staring down at him from about thirty feet in the air, his overcoat not blowing, despite heavy wind.

                The other survivor, who looked like a blue lion crossed with a body builder, came over to help Logan stand.  Wolverine made it apparent that he needed no help.

                The man above them spoke.  "You have two options: either come and work for me, or wait for Xavier's troops to come."

                "I fully accept your invitation, sir, but may I inquire as to how we will return with you," the blue man spoke.

                There was no answer, as Trent waited for Wolverine to answer.  Wolverine was busy examining the air.  The man was the one who had scared Magneto off in the forest.  "What the hell will I be doing for you," Wolverine asked.

                "You'll be working alone.  That's all I'll tell outside the mansion."

                "Fine.  Let's go."  The two survivors were lifted off the ground, although it felt as though they were falling into the air.  Soon, they were flying behind him at a distance, a great distance.

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                Reviews decide the next chapters.  The choices are: Nightcrawler, Storm, or an elaboration of Beast.  After all of the intros, there should be about eight of them, the real story will start.


	3. The Savage: Nightcrawler

X-Men: The Savage

Nightcrawler

                "I ain't a damn delivery boy."  Logan had finally met someone who was just as unmovable when his mind was made up.

                "You agreed to the position."

                "If ya wanted me on yer team, you shoulda known that I'm a killer.  I do search and destroy, not search and retrieve."

                "Time to expand your horizons."  The door slammed shut behind Trent.  Not even Logan had enough balls to go in after the door had been slammed, not after the first couple of times.  It was an unspoken rule, like a child makes about his parents, and informs his friends about so they don't slip up and piss him off.

                In many ways, Trent was more like the president of a company than a parent.  Everyone tried to look busy and important when he walked through, except Logan.  He adapted to the rules as they were told directly to him by Trent, and not a moment sooner.

                He tried leaving, once, but soon found out that he couldn't fight off a whole planet full of people that hated him.  All the humans cared about was the fact that he was a mutant, and Xavier just cared about his damn base.  It seemed that the only people that didn't want a war were living under one roof; everyone outside the mansion was at each other's throat.

                The mansion was beyond any beauty that Logan thought possible in such a world.  The irony was that it was the Xavier family mansion.  Trent had taken it from Xavier when he wasn't paying attention.  It was originally meant to be bait, but it ended up serving an unexpected purpose.  Xavier would launch no attacks on his family's property.  He had been removed from it, and then tortured, making any stable time in that house all the more important, and Charles wouldn't dare destroy those memories of peace.

                But the place where that peace was made was now the base of operations for a war against him.  And now, Logan was being forced to go find another soldier to fight this war.  "What the hell does he look like," Logan shouted through the door.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Yellow eyes watched the helpless man from the shadows.  He'd made the fatal mistake of getting separated from the rest of his lynch mob.  Kurt felt like a lion eyeing dried up old antelope of the herd.   His improved night-vision, however, showed him that there was yet another lion eyeing the same prey.  Kurt's eyes widened as a huge claw came out from the man's left arm.  This was undoubtedly the man on the top of the F.O.H. Top Ten Most-Wanted list.  There wasn't a person in America that hadn't seen the posters, billboards, armbands, and t-shirts that had his face and his claws on them.  What he was doing in Miami was questionable since he had last been seen at the Xavier mansion.  The photographs were from one of the many spy satellites that had been commandeered by the FOH.

                Kurt turned around and leaned against the wall, not permitting him to see the attack.  The sounds of metal ripping through flesh and bone with startling speed resounded through Kurt's mind.  He no longer had any threat, with the possible exception of one of the most feared mutants on the planet, who some people refused to believe existed.  As soon as the man's friends saw his corpse, or whatever was left, they would be aware that their primary enemy was in the vicinity.

                The world disappeared and reappeared in a flash, he was back at home.  No matter how many times he'd done it, it was always a relief to come back home alive.  Staggering over to his recliner, he grabbed his phone and propped his feet up.  He pushed the numbers that he'd been told, struggling to remember the correct combination.  He was greeted as expected.

                "Was the mission a success," a voice said with intensity.  Kurt winced and turned down the volume on his phone.

                "Yeah, I got your information, but it was harder to get than I expected."

                "The payment stands.  No more, no less."  The man on the other end had correctly guessed the conversation to follow.

                "Citing that you don't have the disk, and I do, I would say that you don't have any leverage," a smile crawled across Kurt's fuzzy lips.

                "I didn't know where the information was being kept, but I do know where you live, and I do know every place that you teleport to in an emergency."  The smile fell, but Kurt wasn't fearful.

                "It must be nice being completely oblivious to the unexpected."  He lazily, as though it was spiteful to do it so, hung up the phone.  That last sentence nearly blew his thin cover.  It was difficult to speak complex words without slipping back to his German accent.  It was habit that he spoke to his clients in an American accent, a habit that had become pointless once his career reached a certain level.  He was now being hired by people powerful enough to drag out his background no matter how deep he tried to bury it.  This always kept him within the grasps of the F.O.H. due to their deep reaches into the government, but most of his jobs helped mutant "terrorists" wage their own little war against the government.

                He kept his name away from the big wars against the government.  He'd made the mistake of disabling a large base to aide Sinister in his crusade, and almost ended up dead alongside most of Sinister's army.  It was this experience that caused his to create rules for himself.  Breaking of those rules wasn't a common thing, which was the reason that his business had started to fail; which, in turn, was the reason he'd taken what he thought had been a small risk by working for someone who refused to identify himself.  It had turned into a great risk.  Not only would this mystery-man not identify himself, he wouldn't leave Kurt alone.  He'd call within the next few hours proposing a new job, probably part of an ultimatum now that Kurt had started to show resistance.

                It wasn't worth thinking about.  Many people had tried to kill Kurt, and none had succeeded.  While it was true that Kurt had about six places that he typically went to when times got tough, he could also just pick any street anywhere in any city that he'd ever been to and teleport there.

                After a shower, which took upwards of an hour, considering his fur, he decided to just wait for the phone call from a very adamant client.  Although he managed to stay awake for the next couple of hours, he had spent most of the day being chased by a couple hundred outraged bigots, and was very tired.  Kurt blinked, or so he thought.  In the split second that his eyes were closed, eight hours had managed to pass.

                "I hate that," he said to himself in German.  Groggily, he looked up at the large clock that hung over his television.  Before his eyes were able to adjust and get a halfway decent view of the hands, the phone rang, startling him enough to make him teleport to the kitchen.  Feeling like an idiot, he reached around to grab the cordless phone that sat on the counter.  "Hallo," he nearly choked himself off, realizing that the call may have been from the mystery client.

                "Hello, Kurt."  The voice was unfamiliar.

                "Who is this," Kurt asked, slipping back into his flat accent.

                "There is no need to hide your true self from me, Mr. Darkholme.  We will accept you as you are."

                "You didn't answer my question."

                "We were monitoring your activities last night, and we believe that we have some use for you."

                "You sent the other mutant," Kurt questioned.

                "The other?"

                "Guess not."  Magneto realized he'd just made the same mistake that he had with Wolverine.  "You must not have been monitoring very closely if you did not notice him."

                "The other mutant is not important now.  All that is important is the survival…" Kurt wasn't paying attention.  He saw the red glare coming from his security monitor.  He appeared in front of the eight monitors that made up his security system.  Three of the cameras had been taken out, and the fourth caught the image of a metal claw ripping it down.

                "Ve'll talk later," Kurt cut off Magneto and hung up the phone.  Kurt could have sworn he heard the door squeak, but he wasn't sure if it had just been a beep from the phone.  It wasn't the time to doubt any suspicious noises.  He reached behind the monitors and pulled out the sword he'd taken from an F.O.H. member that had managed to hit him with it.

                Kurt got ready to teleport into his living room, but held back when he heard his fridge open.  He could've sworn he heard the invader mutter, "Damn light beer…"

                He'd had enough of this. Keeping at a safe distance, he teleported to the entrance of his kitchen, just in time to see a stout, hairy man finishing off a bottle of whisky that had been mostly full the last time Kurt saw it.

                "What are you doing here," Kurt yelled, holding the sword out in front of him.  He spun it around in his hand, pretending he knew how to use it, knowing that it was futile against a man who had two sword-length claws that could launch out of his arms.  The truth was that he was scared.  Most of the underworld thought that Wolverine was just a rumor.  Nobody liked to accept that anyone with his supposed powers could kill someone like Apocalypse.  It wasn't as though Apocalypse hadn't been "killed" before, but the people that had managed to do it had tremendous power.  Magneto and Xavier had to team up to bring him down.  The F.O.H. lost a majority of their military in a failed attempt.  Sinister died in an attempt that succeeded, although he'd been declared dead before as well.  Wolverine just had claws, and managed to bring down a five-thousand year old false deity.  Kurt didn't like his odds in combat, but there's no way this guy could catch him if Kurt opted to flee the situation

                "I was told to come here since you left the party early last night."  Logan slammed the bottle down as all of the whisky hit him at once.  Kurt shielded his eyes from the tiny shards sent across the kitchen.  "Good stuff."

                "What do you want with me?"

                "I don't want a damn thing to do with you.  I was sent here under duress."  Logan had picked up a few phrases from Emma in the time he'd been at the mansion.  "I'm part of a team.  The guy who runs it wants you on it."

                "I've already been contacted by someone."

                "It wasn't us, bub, and if it's not us, it's Xavier, and he doesn't take rejection very well, believe me."

                "Vhat if I accept his offer," Kurt took a couple of steps closer to Logan, who did move; he just smiled.

                "Then we'll probably meet again, only I won't be in as good of a mood."  Wolverine tilted his head.  "There's something familiar about yer face, bub, and your smell, too, now that I think about it."  Just as Kurt opened his mouth, the phone rang: this was Kurt's opportunity.  As Logan looked at the ringing receiver, Kurt leapt and swung the sword.  Logan got his right claw out and cut the blade in half.  While he was dodging the disconnected half of the blade, Kurt spun around and jabbed what was left of the sword into the intruders left kidney.  Just as an infuriated Wolverine swung at him, Kurt teleported behind him, grabbed his shoulders, and they both disappeared.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                "And what if our hairy mercenary fails to bring back the furry assassin," Emma looked up from her book at Trent, who had just been staring into space.

                "If Logan doesn't bring him back, I'll send you out to get him," he answered after a short pause.

                "Won't I be busy for the next few days?"  Emma looked insistently at Trent.

                "If Logan fails, and you have to go get Kurt, I'll take care of the breakout."

                "No, Trent!  You've taken too many big assignments away from me!  Do you not trust me enough to get into a tough situation?"

                Trent looked at her with his usual emotionless face.  "If you have to go get Kurt, I'll also let you go get Luke."

                "Oh, come on, I want to have my life in danger, not my marriage vows."

                "How about the Maximoffs?"

                "Wouldn't they want to see you personally?"

                "They'll understand.  Do you want to do it, or not?"

                "I'll take it."  She pointed to the phone, "That's Logan."  Seconds later, it rang.

                "What is it," Trent asked impatiently.

                The scrambled voice came through the speaker.  His communicator was having a hard time getting a signal, especially since it had to transmit through phone lines.  "The little fucker teleported me to the south pole… or maybe the north, and then he disappeared," Logan blurted over the speaker; Emma giggled.

                "I'll be there in a minute, and don't worry about tracking the guy anymore; Emma's going to take care of it."

                "I don't think she has too.  In fact, we can get two birds with one stone."

                "Explain," Trent actually showed some intrigue.

                "It took me a while to realize, but I smelled him before, when he was a little kid: Mystique's little kid.  If we tell him that Xavier's holding her, he'll bust her out, and he doesn't many options after that."

                "Good thinking, but you're not going to be the one to tell him, he doesn't seem to like you," Trent was getting out of his seat.

                "Just come get me!  I don't care anymore."

                Emma walked up to the phone, "He's already gone."  She dejectedly pushed the button, hanging up the phone.  Trent knew everything about his recruits.  He knew Kurt was Mystique's son; that was the reason he sent Wolverine: so he'd recognize the scent, and then he'd have found a real reason to cut her out of the rescue.  "Conniving bastard," she muttered under her breath.

                "You don't have Mystique anymore, huh?"  The voice came from right behind her.  The voice was followed by a pair of hands on her shoulders.  It was Bobby.

                "No, I don't.  He managed to make my life even more boring."

                "Didn't he give you another task in return?"

                "Yes, I have to go get Magneto's pathetic children."

                "What makes you think that will be boring?"

                Emma turned her head up to her husband, "Why wouldn't it be?"

                "Haven't you been reading the reports?"

                "I choose not to read about how hopeless our fight is."

                "Well, the Maximoffs were last seen being held prisoner by their own father.  You're going to have to break into Magneto's personal stronghold to get to them."

                Emma returned her head to its poised position.  "Like I said; no excitement."

                "Then I guess I shouldn't wish you luck?"

                "You say that as if you're leaving sometime soon."  Drake didn't respond except with lowering of his head.  "No: not after what you've been through, Robert."

                "It's going to be a simple assignment… search and retrieve: a teenager.  She hasn't even been spotted by Xavier yet."

                "I still don't think you should be outside of the mansion, not until Hank's results come in."

                "Honey, Hank's lab is about a month away from being done, much less giving any results."

                "So," she with a grin on her face.

                He crouched down at her knees.  "However much you'd like me to remain intact, so you can use me at your convenience, I feel worthless just wandering around the mansion."

                "Then just go lie down in bed."

                "I can't just sleep for a month."

                "Who said anything about sleep?"

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Logan had been waiting three minutes in the frozen section of Hell in just a flannel shirt and jeans.  Anybody else would have been dead or a comatose ice-cube at that point, but Logan's body wouldn't let frostbite take hold.  This by no means meant that Logan wasn't cold: he was pacing just to keep his external temperate at freezing point.  At the fiftieth interval, he finally saw a human figure in the distance.  Logan risked his eyes freezing to get a better look.  The figure wasn't affected by the cold, wasn't in any hurry, and he definitely wasn't Trent.

                "Who are you," Logan shouted against the wind.

                "Leave," hissed the voice.  The voice reverberated on itself, making sound demonic.

                "Just waiting for my ride," Logan shot back.  He straightened his arms out, preparing to release his claws.

                "Pity."  Logan's preparation was necessary, but insufficient.  The man's eyes glowed red, reflecting off the pristine snow for several meters.  Then, he charged: much quicker than humanly possible.  His skin morphed to create a large blade sticking out the side of his arm, although it retained its original texture.  The charge would have cut Logan in half, an attack he could survive although it would leave him without legs, but the runt managed to dodge most of the attack.  Logan gave the stranger a taste if real claws, causing the man to stumble.

                The man turned and a beam raced from its origin: the man's hand, to the middle of Logan's forearm, completely vaporizing all flesh in it's path, leaving just a metal skeleton and retracted claw with no muscles to push it outward.  The stranger's hand glowed yellow once again, but never completed its task, citing that it has been separated from the rest of the body.  The hand wasn't alone, the dark man was ripped apart.

                Logan now spotted his "ride" twenty feet away: hand outstretched.  Trent floated in Logan's direction, toes dragging along the snow.  "Who the hell was that?"

                "Don't worry, you'll meet him again."

                "After that," Logan motioned in the direction of the pieces.  After actually looking, found that the pieces were drawing closer to each other.

                "Let's go," Trent, for the first time in front of Logan, actually sounded worried.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                "Who the hell was that," Logan snorted.  His arm had to unfreeze, then heal; so the re-growth was taking a considerable amount of time.

                "His name is Gabriel.  He's one of Xavier's sons."  Charles Xavier had started a massive program to create a successor.  He'd since had over twenty children.  What he was searching for was a powerful telepath to take his place.  Using genetic pairing techniques given to him by Sinister, he tried to create this protégé.  Sinister had conned Xavier, though.  The pairings were faulty, giving powerful offspring, but none of the type Xavier wanted.  Once Charles discovered this, he had Sinister killed, which was a moot action, and came up with his own pairing system.  He now had four powerful psionic children.

                Sinister's faulty pairings were not always as faulty as originally intentioned.  Melissa, Xavier's first daughter, had moderate telepathic ability, but unbelievable telekinesis, rivaling the Phoenix Force in strength, and completely outclassing it in flexibility.  The other exception to Sinister's nearly perfect plan was Gabriel.

                The second half of Essex's plan was to collect upon Xavier's "failed" children.  As suspected, Charles would forget about the failures, leaving them to their own design's in the Xavier Alliance Military.  Sinister would then manipulate them into fighting in his own twisted resistance.

                "What the hell is he doing in Antarctica?"  Logan discerned he was south of the equator when they made a stop in Brazil to let Logan's arm heal.  The area around them was a thick forest, leaving the two walking down a narrow path.

                "Like most of Charles' children, Gabriel defected to Sinister's army.  He wasn't too happy there either.  Apocalypse picked him up as leverage against both Xavier and Sinister.  Not only did he enhance Gabriel's natural powers, he put Gabriel through the same procedure that made Sinister what he is today.  That gave him powers similar to Sinster, and all of the same psychological disorders.  The only problem is that Gabriel was never that smart, leaving him what you saw back there.  He single-handedly destroyed his father's Antarctic division.  If you were just three miles south of where you were, you'd have been in the Savage Land…"

                "Yeah, I know about the Savage Land."  Logan found it hard to make the decision to interrupt Trent, this was the most he'd spoken since Logan had arrived.

                "You don't know what's going on there right now.  I assure you that Gabriel was honestly considering adding you to his forces."

                "How many mutant armies are there in this world?"

                "Six."

                Logan hadn't been expecting an answer.  "Fine then; I'll bite.  Elaborate for me."

                "Our army, Gabriel's, Sinister's, Xavier's, Apocalypse's, and Ororo's."

                "You're counting us?"

                "We technically qualify, despite our numbers."

                "How do we stack up…" Logan stopped.  The little blue bastard was watching them; Logan searched frantically for Kurt.  "He's-"

                "I know," Trent interjected.  "Why do you think we stopped to let you heal here?"

                "I'll go get him," Logan paced to an arbitrary spot to begin his search.

                "You're going back to the mansion," Trent firmly stated.  With a wave of Trent's hand, Logan was heading north, through the air, at high speed.  "You're going to talk to me if you want your mother to live."

                As expected, this stirred Kurt, causing a small branch to snap.  Trent snapped his head in that direction.  The trunks of the mighty trees snapped, and what remained of the trees fell over with unnatural speed.  Trent had to move quickly.  The sound made by his actions would attract considerable attention.

                The only evidence of Kurt's presence blew away and dissipated in the wind.  He hadn't gone far, though.  Trent couldn't draw an exact bead on Darkholme's location, but proximity was enough.  He had teleported to a nearby city, where everyone was looking to the forest for the origin of the shatter they'd heard.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt was tired.  He'd pushed himself too hard teleporting from his home to Antarctica (extra strain added from carrying another person and the cold), then to Brazil.  Kurt remained confused due to the fact that he'd traveled farther distances with ease, but something about the man he took with him made it difficult to carry him.  Now he was doing his best to hide from a man who could obviously travel the same distance with minimal strain.  The man seemed civil enough when speaking to his short friend, but Kurt wasn't as hard as a tree, and the man certainly didn't seem civil to the trees.

                He had to find a way to rest long enough to get his energy back.  Upon spotting his hunter walking the streets, obviously searching for someone, Kurt realized he wouldn't get to have that luxury.  He knew he had to get away from his stalker to think.

                Every turn, however, gave him another sight of the man he was trying to evade.  He couldn't think of any way out of this situation.  In fact, he didn't have any idea where he was going, or how he was choosing his path of retreat.  It felt as though he was barely controlling his own body.  And in Kurt's experience, if it felt like he didn't have control of his body, he didn't.  This hypothesis was proven when he tried to turn around and go back, and his body adamantly chose not to.  He tried to fight whoever had a hold on him, but he could feel nobody inside of his head.  His unwilling path lead him to a clearing at the bottom of hill, where the hold on his body was released.  The energy had been sucked out of his body, and Kurt found it an impossible task to stand.  The draining of his energy continued until he eventually passed out.

                "It worked," Melissa spoke into the phone.  "He's unconscious."

                "Of course he is," her father barked, then hung up.

                "I don't know why he wants you," Melissa spoke to the body, "we already have three teleporting mutants."  It didn't matter though, what Xavier wanted, Xavier got.  She lifted him off the ground to take to the nearby helicopter.  Although he managed to move up according to her command, he wouldn't follow her when her telekinesis beckoned.  Melissa mentally pulled on an un-breaking harness, keeping the blue man held in place.  Citing that she wasn't technically pulling Kurt, but rather a field around him, he was free from the tensions of her struggle.  Knowing this, she used all of her mental strength to pull her target to her.  Four-thousand tons of force, and the opposing strength didn't even strain.

                It had been almost obvious to her from the beginning that one of Trent's lackeys had been opposing her.  _Almost; it was incredibly obvious now that the second mutant on the sensor which had been chasing her target had actually been the leader of the opposition himself._

                "Where are you, Trent?"

                "Leave him," he sounded as though he was in front of her, but it was just a trick.  He used his powers to accelerate his voice to a position a few feet in front of her.

                "Why are you so interested in him," She asked, knowing full well that he could hear her.

                There was a long pause from the other end of the proverbial cup-and-string conversation they were having, after which, he reinitiated the conversation with: "Your father's here."  She could now feel his presence as he departed.  She never understood why Trent ran from her father, as he was more than able to stand toe-to-toe with Xavier.

                "What is taking so long," Charles yelled once he arrived.

                "Just talking."  She grinned as she once again picked Kurt up off the ground.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                "Have we lost him," Piotr asked once Trent landed in the back lawn.

                "He'll be here before midnight," His leader stated in all seriousness, despite the fact that little more than an hour remained before midnight.  Piotr smiled knowing full-well what made Trent so assured of the speed he wanted

                "Speaking of midnight," Piotr turned to his son, who had begged him to stay up late, "It's almost time for bed."

                "I wanna stay up all night," his son pushed through a heavy yawn.

                "I'll let you try as long as you're in your bed."

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt shot up out of his unfamiliarly soft surface.  He quickly looked around, ready to teleport out at the slightest sign of danger.  He'd only been captured once before, and it had been an experience he vowed never to let happen again.  The only sign of anything remotely dangerous in the room was a petite brunette sorting through a pile of clothes and other commodities Kurt recognized as his own.

                "Don't try to teleport yourself out of here," the woman warned.  "The mutation blocker has always had a problem with teleporters.  They tend to die when they attempt to exit the premises."

                "Vhere am I?"

                "Xavier's back-up base, which has quickly become his primary base."

                "Vhy?"

                "He probably wants to recruit you.  Have you been contacted by Mr. Lensherr yet?"

                Kurt assumed that the man who called his before the guy with the claws showed up.  "Yeah, I have.  I hung up on him."

                "So you're the one.  Don't expect to be welcomed very warmly by him, then."

                "I don't expect to be around long enough to let him."

                "Oh, really," the brunette quipped.  "And why wouldn't you want to be in Xavier's service?"

                "Because I saw one of the men who is against Xavier, and trust me, I'm better off on my own."

                "Who did you see," she asked.  Her tone seemed desperate for this information.

                "A very tall vith… brown eyes and long hair."

                "How long?"

                "I don't know," Kurt said suspiciously, "It was tucked behind his overcoat.  Longer than his shoulders.  Vhy?"

                "Not many people have seen him.  We're ordered to study him around here, but nobody's ever even seen a picture, unless they've seen him in person.  Ooh, were any of his brothers there?"

                "Just one other man, short and hairy."

                "Damn, that doesn't sound like any of them."

                "That's enough," another voice said.  Xavier, or so Kurt assumed, was standing in the doorway.  "I believe his room is in decent order."

                "Yes, sir," she said before scurrying out of the room.

                "Miss Pryde was one of our top students.  It was her… unhealthy obsession with Mr. Reign that lead to her expulsion from my school."

                "Mr. Reign?"

                "The man who was chasing you.  The other, stout man was an agent of his.  We monitored your attempted disposal of him."

                "So you vere monitoring me before the phone-call?  Since I disposed of him just a minute after your… Magneto, called."

                "Very astute," Xavier sported a disappointed look, but soon wiped it from his face.  He began to walk away and motioned for Kurt to follow him.  "We are very impressed by the distance you can travel considering your method of teleportation: dimension shifting"

                "Who's "we" and vhy are you interested?"

                "Well, Mr, Reign also has a method of transportation; dealing the creation of miniature wormholes.  We have several others of your abilities, but they work along the… wormhole lines.  Although they tend to be able to travel greater distances, once they teleport away from Mr. Reign, he can simply keep the portal open and follow them.  But my scientists and I believe that your specific trans-dimensional method of teleportation is impossible to copy with Reign's abilities."

                "How long have you been vatching me?"

                "Since you started accepting jobs against the Friends of Humanity.  Have you any idea whom you were accepting jobs from?"  Xavier didn't ask the question for Kurt to answer; he knew.

                "He never said who he vas."

                "His name is Dominic Reign.  He has caused us as much trouble as his brother, but he recently began to focus most of his attention on the Friends of Humanity.  The thing is that he is always directly involved in all of his missions.  Never in his past has he hired a mercenary, except in your case, and we wanted to know why."

                "I vould like to know myself."

                "Well, I believe that since he's never done this before, you're unusually important.  We wish to test that theory.  If Dominic or Trent comes to claim you, then we'll be assured."

                "Vhat vould this assurance mean to you?"

                "Aside form having one of my two greatest threats right under in front of me, we would get to know their patterns a little better.  Every step towards understanding an enemy is an important one."

                "I don't like the idea of being used as bait."

                "You're being used as a soldier.  I am offering you nothing but what you gave yourself in your own life.  I want to give you assignments where you work on your own.  The only difference is that every extravagant thing you could possibly want would be at your fingertips, without being limited by your income, or having an employer refuse to pay.  All I'm offering you, is the life of a King."

                "A King subservient to an Emperor.  Vhat good will it be if I am never at vhatever lavish home you vant to provide me vith?  I have seen vhat happens to mercenaries that become soldiers."

                "Ask any other soldier here.  From Magneto to Scot Summers to the lowliest security officer: you will get the same answer.  No one here is run ragged with work, I do not hold slaves.  You will not work any more than you have before today. And believe me, the lavish home that I have picked out for you will be worth every second you spend in it."

                "Earlier you vere saying 'were,' and now you are saying 'will.'  Vhat makes you think that I'm going to join you."

                "What are your other options?  Believe me.  A life with the Reign family is nothing but turmoil and endless missions."

                "So that puts you at the top?  Believe _me_, you are no closer to recruiting me now than you vere before Magneto called."  Kurt turned away from Xavier's wry smile and headed back to the room that Xavier took him away from.

                "Watch your back in your room.  Mr. Reign might be in there while you sleep, in one way or another."  Kurt didn't give a response; he just wondered how someone could get in, especially if Xavier expected it.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt did manage to go to sleep in the room Xavier provided for him, despite the fact that he felt he was being watched.  Not just by cameras, but he had a suspicion that the brunette was watching him again, though there was no way to get into his room except the door, which hadn't been opened.  But the feeling kept knowing away at him, despite the fact that not a noise had been made.

                He jarred himself out of the half-sleep he'd been in and looked around the room.  It was so obvious that he seemed to ignore it out of disbelief, but in the middle of the room was the ghostly figure of Trent Reign, the man Kurt last saw laying waste to an acre of sycamores.  He was just standing there, catatonic, staring at Kurt with glowing white eyes.  Once Kurt had been staring at him for a few moments, Trent began to walk toward the door, leaving a fading trail that mocked his figure behind him.  Solid objects were no object as the figure walked straight through the door.

                Kurt didn't sit stunned for very long, and quickly followed him into the hallway.  Kurt looked left just in time to see his residual energy float down into the third hallway down.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                "Wait, the cameras just went out."

                "What," Xavier barked from his prone position in the back of the room.  "Which ones and why?"

                "The one in that new guy's room and a few surrounding hallways.  We just lost the line to the camera for no reason."

                "You mean it was severed?"

                "No," the security guard said, "the modules to those cameras were destroyed."

                "Find out where the path lead and get everyone you can there."

                "Path?"

                "The camera failures will undoubtedly clear a path for Mr. Darkholme to go somewhere we don't want him to go.  Find out where that is."

                "No offense, sir, but it's fairly obvious he would be lead to Mrs. Darkhome's cell, since his name is Darkholme as well."

                "She's here," Charles violently questioned.  "I ordered her sent to Houston."

                "She was transferred here last week by Mrs. Grey when she nearly escaped-"

                "Just get whoever can near her cell!"

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt followed the apparition rather closely now, little more than a foot behind him, finding that he was sleeping rather closely to some holding cells.  The sign above the door said it was for the mentally ill.  Several desperate-looking people ran up to the front of the cell, begging him to let them out, then there were those who backed to the farthest corner of their cell at the sight of the man Kurt was following.

                Once the simple cells had run out, they stepped into a hall of maximum-security section.  Trent faded away  once they reached the very end of the hall, a dead-end.

                "Vhat am I supposed to do now," Kurt called out.

                On each door was a standard numeric pad.  The pads were clear plastic, with a backlight to illuminate the numbers.  As soon as Reign disappeared, the three began to glow much brighter than the others, almost blindingly.  Kurt pressed the digit, dimming the three, and shifting the glow to the eight.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                The lights flickered above Xavier.  "What is that?"

                "The Negation Field… it's been deactivated."

                "What!"

                The security camera swiveled just in time to see a leg and a wisp of brown hair retreating through a wall.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt opened the door just as the lights flickered above him.  He ignored the disturbance when he saw the beleaguered form, restrained, laying on the floor.  It was his mother.  She managed to tilt her head enough to see him.

            "Kurt," she strained to say, "get out of here."  Her words were slurred, as if her tongue had fallen limp.  Instinct took over in Kurt, and he had taken his mother in his arms.  He quickly stepped out into the hall, to be met by two of the people that had been in the news the most in the past months: Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

                "It seems I made a mistake in transferring Ms. Darkholme here," Jean said, an outline of fire encompassed her slim frame.

                "I believe the fault lies with our security system."  In step with Jean, his eyes began to glow red.

                "What are you waiting for," Magneto hovered around the corner.  "Charles ordered them destroyed."

                Before Kurt tried to teleport back to his home, he was grabbed by a thin hand and pulled through a wall.  It was the brunette that had been cleaning his room.  "Teleport us to Times Square."

                "Vhat?"

                "All of us!  Hurry, before they turn the Negation Field back on!"  Kurt decided it was as safe of a place as any, and teleported to the very familiar intersection in New York City.  The last thing he saw was the three people in the hall plus Xavier crashing through the wall.

                Xavier quickly traced their mental patterns and ordered Jean to take them to Times Square.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                A bright flash of fire was immediately replaced by mass of blue.  Kurt didn't see anybody in the usually bustling intersection.

                "We shouldn't have come here," Mystique slurred out, sloppily pushing herself to stand on her own.

                "Now, now, Ms. Darkhome," the brunette said while looking around, "you don't have many options."

                "I'd rather be dead than following Trent."

                Kurt didn't get to question how his mother was affiliated with the man that had been after him for the past four hours.  The people who had been chasing him just jumped out of a giant fire-bird.  "Vhy did ve come here if there is no protection," Kurt shouted at the brunette.

                "Remember when I asked you if you've met one of Trent's brothers?"

                "Yes."

                "Well, you're about to."

                "I can't say I understand why you came here," Xavier shouted.  "Trent is currently in Moscow, and he's not quick enough to save you now."  A small ball of energy formed in front of Xavier, and Scott's eyes began to glow red.

                "Hey," called a man that had been in Moscow with Trent just a second beforehand.  Kurt recognized the voice as his most recent client.  Before the five attackers managed to turn their heads completely, the man that had yelled instantly appeared where Xavier and his ilk had been standing.  The ilk, however, were all flying in different directions, blood trailing their bodies.

                He appeared just feet from them with the same speed that he'd attacked Xavier.  Mystique managed to predict where he was going to appear and spit in that direction.  The young man, no older than twenty, saw it coming and shifted a few feet to the right.  "Nice to see you, too, Raven."

                "I'll kill myself before I let you two destroy us all!"

                "Now, Raven, we both know you're too selfish to do something like that."  Kurt just watched his mother seethe at the young man, and the boy smile back.

                The brunette broke the stare-down by jumping on the young man and kissing him.  "God, I hated being a spy in that bastard's second-rate base!"  She wrapped he legs around him and began force the boy into kissing her.

                "You're kind of breaking my tough guy image, hon."

                "I really care," she said sardonically.  A blinding light sparked to on the near sidewalk, and out stepped Trent.  Giving his mother's obvious feelings about these men, Kurt took a step back from the new arrival.

                "Go home," he said to the love-birds, and they disappeared, leaving Kurt and his mother alone with Trent, and the bodies of Xavier and friends, who were beginning to rouse.

                "Kurt," Mystique's linguistics were coming back to her, "you have to trust me.  We'll be safer on our own.  Don't listen to anything he says.  All he wants to do is kill you."

                "As opposed to what," Trent said.  Kurt noticed that the man didn't deny it.  "You two can come with me, and help me bring about the world that should be.  Or you go to your house, where Lorna Dane, Sean Cassidy, and a few Guthries are waiting for you."  Kurt eyed the man and then his mother suspiciously.  "If nothing else, stay until Xavier finds a new target.  I guarantee that it will be less than five days."

                Kurt looked down at his mother, who dropped her head as if she had been defeated.  "Fine, let's go."  A portal similar to the one that Trent cam out of appeared around them, and Kurt found himself in the Lobby of a huge mansion.  A trail of clothes lead up the stairs.

                "Are you the one that said they could stay here?"  A woman with white hair came out of a den.  "You know every time they stay here, they keep Bobby and I awake all night with that damn headboard."  She seemed completely oblivious to Kurt and his mother.  "What the hell are Bobby and I supposed to do?"

                "Move your own headboard; start a competition," Trent suggested half-heartedly.  Emma just sighed, and looked up the stairs to room that the noise-makers were in, and ascended the stairs, transforming into some crystalline form.

                Trent ignored her, looking down at Mystique, who had distanced herself from the world.  "She should be down in the infirmary, until the drugs wear off."  Emma reached the top of the stairs and barged into the room at the top.  Moaning could be briefly heard, followed by a scream, then the familiar sound of wood being broken.  Seconds later, Emma emerged from the room with a headboard under her arm, which she threw down the stairs.  "I'll show you where it is," Trent said once the headboard came to rest at his feet.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

                Once Mystique had been kept in the care of another blue mutant, they found their way to his office, which had thousands of books on the wall, many of them had to do with warfare, and more to do with quantum theory.

                "Bobby will show you to your room, and your mother's, so you can show her tomorrow."

                "Vhy did you bring me in here?  I want to speak with my mother."

                "When you're in a situation you've never been in, with people you've never met, don't hesitate to follow through on a decision."

                "You vanted me to go to my house, where those people vere vaiting."

                "That wasn't what you wanted to do," he scolded.  "You wanted to accept my protection, but you waiting for your mother's approval.  Your mother has been jaded to many people and ideas.  If you're waiting for her approval on who to trust, you'll find yourself in a thin group of people with no ambition."

                "My mother has survived this vorld through her intelligence.  I trust her."

                "She survived in that prison because Xavier was planning on using her as leverage if you dissented.  She'd have been dead more than a year ago, if you hadn't been spotted and identified as her son."

                "And vhat are you using her for?  You knew vhere she's been in the last year, and you did nothing."

                "She would have come out of that prison today with or without you.  Xavier doesn't give up prisoners easily."

                "Vhy did you break her out, then, if not as an incentive to me?"

                "My reasons for recruiting you have nothing to do with her, or vice versa.  You were to be recruited, regardless of your mother's status.  The timing happened to be convenient."  Kurt was about to ask another question, but was interrupted, "Please don't keep Bobby waiting any longer," Trent motioned to the door of his office.  Kurt had learned to identify when he was talking to a wall.

                Upon entering the hall, he met the man he assumed was Bobby.  "I'm beginning to see a pattern in Trent's recruitment," he said regarding the blueness of the last three people brought to the mansion.  Kurt didn't respond.  "I know Trent can be annoying at times… at most times.  But believe me, even though he came up with the ideal, he's not the best one to get it across.  He thinks too much about strategy now to give a damn about people feelings.  If you want someone to talk to about why we're fighting, go talk to Piotr."  Bobby's tone changed through that last sentence as he tried to imagine why he had to step over a broken headboard to get to the stairs.  "He'll probably be out back playing with his kid."

                The rest of the trek was silent until they reached a room several doors away from the room where the previous commotion had taken place, much to Kurt's pleasure.  He didn't want to be near two fighting couples.  "Vhere is my mother's?"

                "The room across the hall."

                "Thanks," Kurt responded, send Bobby on his way.

                "Emma," he called, "what did you do to Dominic and Kitty's bed?"  Kurt could only hear a mumble from downstairs.  "Good idea," Bobby yelled in response, just before Kurt closed his door.

                Any remaining property of Kurt's that Xavier didn't take had been moved to this room.  It was obvious that Reign got to his house first, since most of his valuable property was in the room.  Finding himself with a lack of options, he sorted his clothes and valuables, including the sliced sword, then killed some time taking a shower.

                Kurt was unable to predict what life at this house would be like.  He was in a position he had never been in before, with people he had never met.  The next day, he was going to take Trent's advice and follow through with whatever decision he made.

***

                I took a considerable break from writing fanfiction, about ten moths, and got back to work on this story.  Before finishing this chapter, I started an X-Men: Evolution story: Voices' Warnings.  I like to keep my mind on one story at a time.  Please cast your vote as to which story you'd like me to work on first.   Please read both before casting your vote.


	4. The Savage: Iceman

X-Men: The Savage

Iceman

                Kurt eventually accepted the invitation to join Mr. Reign, after considering his zero other real options.  Surprisingly, so did Mystique, though Hank said she'd talked a lot about protecting Kurt in her sleep, so he assumed that she was only staying to protect her son, though Kurt felt that, if that was the case, she wouldn't stick around long.  Being under Trent's wing meant training: a whole lot of training.

                Logan, Mystique, Kitty, and Hank all had very singular powers that could not be enhanced from training.  Logan and Hank had powers that were not able to be controlled, Mystique had more than a century of experience, and Kitty had been trained by Xavier while she was spying on him, and she had been declared an expert in her power days before the breakout.  All that they had to worry about was their fighting ability, which Logan and Mystique had in droves.  Hank had a natural acrobatic ability, and when that ability was mixed with his quick thinking and imagination, he proved a formidable foe.  Teaching Hank a fighting style would hinder his abilities; thus, all he needed was a daily spar with another team member.

                Kurt, on all of the other hands, had a power that could be increased and elaborated upon, and although he had more acrobatic ability than Beast, he wasn't nearly as intelligent.  Also, all of the years of being a mercenary, he'd lost his fighter's instinct.  He usually accepted jobs where, if fighting broke out, the mission was a failure.  These missions fit into his sneaky nature.

                He also found out that although he was by no means out of shape, he was not as physically fit as he could have been.  Just days after training began, Kurt began to notice his muscles were becoming more defined and much larger.  When the entire team went to Africa to visit a friend of Trent's, Ororo (who they did not have time to meet), Kurt got a few looks from the women that were members of the much larger team, and two men.  These looks weren't the normal looks of confusion or disgust that he was accustomed to; they were looks of unmistakable lust.  The girls were quickly shooed away by Mystique, who informed Kurt that they were only interested because none of the team members were allowed to leave the premises, speak to humans, or even "congregate" amongst themselves.  Mystique didn't find it funny when Kurt said he saw no problems with their motivations, although he didn't say it in such a gentlemanly manner.

                It turned out that the day in Africa was the team's day off.  As soon as they got back, they began training again.  Dominic was the combat instructor, both battlefield and hand-to-hand.  Battlefield training, however, was going on "insignificant" missions that almost got them killed every time.  What made the team feel worse was that Dominic wasn't even using his powers during the exercises and never got a scratch on him.  The missions were almost always against the F.O.H., and they went on about three of them a day.  Emma told him that Trent used to do all of the training, and that he was lucky he wasn't around during that time.  It was during a training exercise that Bobby was seriously injured, leaving him unable to train, much less go on actual missions.  Logan, who Kurt had a hard time making up with, was only being trained under Trent for a little more than a week before Kurt arrived, and made the excuse that Kurt never would have been able to stab him had he not been in training less than two hours beforehand.  Since the man could heal an entire forearm wroth of flesh in about thirty minutes, as Kurt heard the day afterward, he didn't believe the excuse.

                In the six days that Kurt had been on the team, Trent had only stopped by the hand-to-hand training session once, just to see how Kurt and Kitty were advancing.  Dominic had just finished sparring with Emma, who defended herself well, but ultimately fell to Dominic.  Trent seemed a tad disappointed that nobody had defeated Dominic yet.

                "Come on, Trent," Dominic said once Emma limped her way off of the mat, "it's been years since we fought."

                "No," Trent simply answered.

                "But Kurt and Kitty haven't seen you fight yet, and none of them have seen you fight me."

                "I'd hate to hurt you, Dominic.  I wouldn't want to put a damper on tonight's fuck-fest."

                "That was low, Trent.  You're just begging for a fight now."  Trent seemed to acknowledge that everyone in the room was looking forward to the fight.

                Though everyone knew that they were both incredibly powerful, they'd never seen how they stacked up without their powers.  Trent had never gone with his team on their training missions, and when he was teaching hand-to-hand.  He simply taught them the moves and criticized them from the sidelines.  The few times he did fight it was incredibly evident that he'd been holding back.

                "Let's make this quick," Trent said.  For the first time, Kurt and the other new recruits saw Trent take off his ever-present overcoat.  Tucked behind the coat, flowing down to his ankles, was Trent's hair: jet-black and straight, just two inches from the ground.  The coat floated over to a bench that resided against a far wall.  The hair, which the four new arrivals had their eyes locked on, began to shrink, as if all of the follicles were being pulled into Trent's head.  Soon, it looked as if Trent had shaved his head two weeks before, and the hair had grown just a little.  It would have been stupid to give Dominic something that long to pull on.

                Another surprising thing was that Trent had been constantly slightly hunched over whenever he stood, making the team think that Dominic was the taller of the two.  As Trent stood across from Dominic, he fully extended his back, revealing that he was actually about an inch taller than his brother.  His height was magnified by his fighting stance.  Dominic put himself into a classic pose, with his knees bent.  Trent simply stood up straight, his hands at his side, at a slight angle to his brother.

                Without warning, the fight began once the two had taken their places.  Dominic was smirking throughout the majority of the fight, despite the fact that he couldn't lay a punch on Trent.  Trent hadn't retaliated, though.  He spent the first minute of the fight dodging every punch and kick thrown.  His fighting style showed surprising restraint and flexibility, but mostly a drastic difference to how he trained his recruits.  He seemed to have trained them in a way that they could never beat him should they somehow be stripped of their powers.  He also seemed to have trained Dominic this way.

                Then, Dominic slipped up.  The first show of offense by Trent turned out to end the fight.  Aside from relentless dodging, Trent seemed to excel at hitting an opponent many times without giving them a chance to respond.  Dominic attempted clothes-line type move, and Trent looked like he was going to lock arms with him, but instead, he went completely under it, and struck his brother in the back of the neck with both fists.   Once he turned around, the series of blows continued: a knee to the gut, a knee to the back, an uppercut, a front-side sweep-kick, an elbow in the kidneys (this hit struck Dominic down, citing that he was in the air from the sweep-kick), which caused Dominic to land on Trent's knee.  Trent lifted his knee, tossing his brother in the air, and hit Dominic in the face hard enough to get him perpendicular to the ground, though half a foot off of it.  Trent finished the fight with a spin-kick to the same kidney, sending Dominic flying for a few feet.  All of this happened in about five seconds.

                The ordeal left Dominic unconscious.  The only signs of life were his heavy breathing and the occasional cough of blood.  "Get him awake as soon as possible," Trent said to Hank.  Kitty snapped out of her trance and ran to Dominic, trying to assist him in getting the blood out of his lungs.  She'd heard about the disastrous effects that occurred when the two clashed, and saw a few of the scars, but she didn't like seeing it happen.  Trent's hair returned to what they assumed was its normal length, and his coat floated back over his arms.  "Come on, Kurt," he called, "we're starting early today."  Kurt followed Trent out of the gym, looking back once.

                Kurt's individual training, aimed mostly at increasing the distance he could teleport, usually took place at night, to decrease the possibility that the areas he teleported to were well-populated.  Aside from distance, Trent had been testing Kurt, testing if Kurt could have some sort of divine knowledge of the place he was to teleport.  He figured Kurt had been avoiding obstacles subconsciously.  Trent would make the target area (the place that Kurt was to teleport) in the middle of a large mass, and sure enough, Kurt would miss the mark and appear at the point closest to the mark, but had sufficient space for Kurt to stand freely.  Sometimes this distance was miles apart, and Kurt didn't even think about it.

                "Vere all of those hits necessary?  Dominic seemed to be unconscious after the third hit."

                "He was unconscious after the first hit, and may I remind you that I'd rather hear you speak German than hear you stumbling over English words."

                "Then why did you keep hitting him," Kurt said in German.  It was a relief to speak his native tongue to somebody besides his mother.

                Trent responded in German as well, "Because he didn't want to fight me for sport, he wanted to test himself, and I wasn't about to lie to him on where he stands among our family."

                "And where does he stand?"

                "Second place."

                Kurt now felt he had somewhat of a better understanding of Trent and Dominic's relationship, and he was a bit worried about the reinforcement of the insinuation that there were more than two Reign brothers.  "What will I be doing today," Kurt was glad to move the topic away from what he just saw.

                Trent looked at Kurt, suspicious of his sudden change in subject, but he answered Kurt's question anyway.  "The day you broke out of Xavier's, I was in Moscow.  I left something that has no political reason for being there.  I want you to identify it, tell _me what it is, and then get it.  You are not to leave the spot you're standing in until you've identified the object, and you definitely won't go to Moscow until you've seen me."_

                "How am I supposed to do that?"

                "They're your powers.  Figure it out, though I suggest you start small.  You have no time limit."  With that, Trent walked away, leaving Kurt with the staggering task of doing something he'd never even come close to doing.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Bobby stared out at the lawn, looking down on Kurt, who was standing in the spot that Drake himself once stood in.  Bobby's mission had been to create an eight-hundred foot ice-sculpture of himself in the middle of the Sahara and sustain it for twenty-four hours.  At the time, it was nearly impossible, but just before the accident, he could do it while sleeping.

                The accident had been during one of their training exercises.  It had turned out that the particular base they were invading was not only the holding pen of several rogue mutants.  The mutants they were to save all had the same level of hatred for Trent that Mystique had possessed.  Since the governments of the world had largely turned on mutants and some had taken to actively hunting them, the majority of mutants had turned to absolute anarchists.  Their absolute hatred for authority obviously led to a disgust of Trent's rather strict training regimen and his tendencies to keep his motivations and methods mostly top-secret.  They had no such disgust when Bobby, Emma and Piotr had come to break them out.  Unfortunately they also weren't incredibly grateful, and seemed to try and do everything in their power to mess up the plan that had been carefully laid out to keep them alive.

                When one of the ungrateful mutants was supposed to hold a door open for Bobby to get through, he simply ran off, leaving Bobby to deal with two hundred F.O.H. special agents.  Drake immediately erected a ten-foot thick wall of ice that was as durable as he could muster under the time constraints.  What he hadn't though about (his mind still trying to quell the anger he was feeling for the man that abandoned him) was the ventilation system.  So while he was freezing the wall, trying to create a moisture trail thick enough for him to travel through, one of the most famous F.O.H. soldiers managed to aim a rifle out of the duct and shoot Bobby right in the spine, immediately retreating afterwards.  Just as Drake hit his knees, his body in shock from the injury, the soldiers managed to get through the wall, some getting off shots.  They hadn't broken the wall quickly enough, though.  Emma had contacted Trent, who arrived and ripped the soldiers apart, literally.

                Bobby was able to heal most flesh-wounds by simply transforming into his ice form and filling in the areas where his flesh would be.  He could transfer his DNA into that ice and when he got back to normal, the ice would just turn into the missing pieces.  The filled in areas would be completely numb for months afterward, citing that nerve cells were much more complicated to replace.  This being the case, his spinal cord was taking an extremely long time to replace; he had only been able to walk for three weeks.  The process had been going by much quicker since Hank arrived.  Being both an M.D. and a geneticist, Hank was able to both perform surgery on Bobby, and enhance his ice's ability to hold DNA strands.  Despite the advances, Drake was still only at about fifteen percent of his maximum power, and maybe a bit more recovered physically.

                His enfeebled state was the reason that Emma was frantically arguing with Trent to give her the job instead of Bobby.  Trent, for some reason, was unbending in his assertion that Bobby was the one for the job.  Drake didn't really care either way.  If Trent was going to give the mission to an injured man, then he knew that Bobby could do it, and Bobby knew that Emma was capable of performing the same task.

                "You've already delayed Bobby's mission four days," Trent barked back at her.  "Every day you delay this, the more dangerous the mission becomes."               

                "Then let me go on it!  I know you don't want Bobby dead, so don't put him in this situation."

                "He's going!"  Trent looked at Bobby, who was letting his wife destroy any chances he had of getting back into missions again.  If he stayed out too long, he became a liability.  He had to be reminded of his survival skills, and taken out of constant care.  In other words, he had to get away from Emma.  "I will send him into the middle of a F.O.H. base to drag her corpse back if you delay this mission enough."  He took another look at Bobby, who was now turned toward the conversation, then Trent looked to Emma.  "The time that he goes on the mission is the decision of the leash-holder."  Trent took his leave after that statement.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Despite the many more protests of Emma, Bobby was out to find a girl that seemed unimpressive and unimportant overall by dusk.  Her name was Jubilation Lee.  An odd name for a child of two human parents for the time she was born in.  But apparently her family had their family names plotted out for generations to come.  How Trent had come across that information without actually talking to the girl, Bobby would never know.  Even more confusing was the fact that Trent would tell Bobby that much information, but wouldn't tell him what she looked like, or what purpose she would serve, especially after Trent said he had no intention of training her.  He couldn't have had a past connection to her, or else he'd go get her himself and get her back in less than five minutes.

                Bobby ultimately rested on his hypothesis that Trent decided that Bobby needed to spend some time out of the mansion, away from his wife.  He loved Emma, but she could be a bit overbearing at times, and since he had been injured, she began to think that he'd lost all ability to make a decision for himself.  He was understanding of her emotions most of the time, but all of their arguments (which were surprisingly rare) eventually ended with her shouting about Bobby not being able to make his own decisions since he was shot in the back.

                Once he left the mansions, he almost believed her.  He barely knew where to start looking for the girl, and he couldn't make up his mind as to what course he should take.  All Trent said was that she was in Seattle.  In most major cities, finding a mutant wasn't a problem; the mutants were shoved into a tiny area where everyone knew everyone else.  Seattle, however, was where Sinister had set up one of his biggest bases.  Once the usefulness of that base had been exhausted, for whatever reason, he moved on.  However, that base happened to house many of the "second-rate" mutants that had been used as experiments.  Once Sinister left, he let all of them out, apparently having no need for experiments anymore.

                They took good care of the base and expanded upon it considerably, taking up most of the city – by force.  The formed quite an organized and potent force in a surprisingly short amount of time.  Trent didn't count them among his allies because they were a "defensive community" without any real leader or direction.

                Sinister had the base pretty well defended before he left.  He decommissioned most of the base's defensive capabilities before he left, but a mutant they call "Forge" – citing that was the only name he'd ever been called by – managed to get all of the automated defenses up and running in less than two days.  That base focused mainly on anti-aircraft guns, which could even shoot down a spy satellite or a missile if calibrated by a professional.  Such a well-defended location drew mutants in from all over the world, making just one extremely hard to find.  For more than four years, the city had gone without disturbance.

                Trent decided against just popping Bobby into the city, which would be extremely noticeable.  Instead, he sent Bobby, with a car, about five miles outside of the outer perimeter.  This meant that he'd have to go through one of the gates, which were heavily guarded and equipped with sensors that told when someone approaching was a mutant.  Of course, that was just a prelude to the interview process for everyone that allowed past the gate.  Piotr once had to enter the city, but upon hearing who had sent him, they let him skip the interview process.  However, among the inner circles of powerful mutant groups, Trent's motives were being questioned on a regular basis.  Not just because he said he wanted a world of peace with no dominant species, although the clear majority of mutants wanted mutant-rule.  They began to question his motives because of the actions he was taking, or lack thereof.

                His power certainly dictated that he could simply wipe out the F.O.H. and he would have enough allies against Xavier to take him out, but he made no such move.  The majority of his serious missions involved making allies or collecting machinery that seemed to serve no purpose, and was afterwards hidden from the team.  In fact, Bobby's mission got Trent the most worked-up Bobby had ever seen him, and Bobby was just fetching a eighteen year-old girl with a second rate power.  Trent's motivations could typically be guessed at by the time that mission had been started, but not this time.

                "Name?"  Bobby had arrived at the gate and had come to a full stop without even realizing it; he was too busy trying to figure out the purpose of his mission.

                "Robert Drake."  The guard straightened himself out, apparently familiar with his affiliation.

                "Are sent here under orders Mr. Reign?"

                "Yes."

                "Wait here."  The guard left into the wall that surrounded the city.  He was gone for the better part of ten minutes before he finally came back.  "What is your purpose here?"

                "I'm here to pick someone up."

                "Who?"

                "I can't tell you that," Bobby assumed.  He didn't want her to be talked to about the evils and tricks of the Reign family before he got a chance to talk to her.

                The guard looked back through the doorway he'd just emerged from, contemplating going back to ask a few more questions.  He decided against it.  "Go on through.  You'll be expected to answer a few questions."

                "Of course," Bobby said as he drove through the opening gate.  The place where he was to answer those questions was within eyesight after the first corner was turned.  Again, all of the questions were asked while he was in his car.  Only this time, the person asking the questions seemed to be a bit higher up in the unofficial ranking system of Seattle.

                "Hello, Mr. Drake."  Forge himself had gone away from his constant chore of upgrading the city to deal with Bobby directly.  "I hope that we didn't keep you waiting too long.  I realize that you must have made a considerable drive."

                "Not as long as you'd think," Bobby said smirking.

                "Well, anyway, if you would care to come with me to answer a few specific questions.  Your car will be waiting for you when we're finished."  Bobby agreed and stepped out of his car.  A soldier, temporarily a valet, stepped into the car.

                "You might want to be careful with that," Bobby warned, "Trent built that car by hand."  It wasn't actually true.  Trent had used his powers to turn a hunk of metal and other components into a car, to work on accuracy with his powers.  He had done that at the age of eight, and had long forgotten about it.  Nonetheless, the soldier angered the cars behind him by traveling so slowly.

                "Normally, we don't like to hold people back so much, but you are the closest we have a foreign diplomat."

                "I'm honored, but I'm not here to sign a treaty.  I just need to find someone and take return to New York."  Forge looked at him with a smile, but it was not a trusting smile.  He was staring him down, as if waiting for Bobby to spill all of his secrets.

                "Well, to be honest, several of my most trusted associates used to work with Mr. Reign, and have advised me that nothing is ever that simple with him."

                "Well, then, they can assure you that I have no idea what his reasons are.  I'm just doing a favor for a man I owe my life to."

                "Certainly understandable, but I am trying to protect the lives of every person within these walls, and if your orders start endangering the citizenry, then we will do everything in our power to make sure you never come back here."

                "If my orders tell me to cause harm to others, then I'll be protecting your citizenry for you."

                "Very well, then.  I'll let you get on your way.  No offense, but it's best that you hurry away.  You seemed to insinuate that trouble might be on your heels."

                "That I did," Bobby felt Emma's influence showing through him, allowing him to act as stately as possible.  Admitting what Forge had said made them want to get rid of Bobby as quickly as possible, which was a good thing since a lot of the people in Seattle weren't too happy with Trent's idea of bringing about a world of human and mutant cooperation.

                After leaving the office, it wasn't long before he was deep into the city, having passed through many walls that were once the outer walls.  The walls, which were twenty stories tall, concealed buildings that were about eighteen stories tall, and they only got bigger the deeper he got into the city.  New York City was the first largest city in the country, both because it had grown so far north that it stretched into land that once belonged to Canada, and due to the fact that many people went to New York from Los Angeles when the trees violently took over California.  New York also had a giant fortress at its heart, but it was nowhere near the size of the gargantuan fortress that made up the entire city of Seattle, which engrossed most of the state of Washington.

                Seattle was continually expanded upon in a circular pattern.  Since each wall was heavily fortified, the deeper into the city one lived, that safer one was.  Normally, such a situation would cause a class-war between the people that lived on the inside and the outside, but since more than ninety-five percent of the population were working on or designing the infinitely-important walls, the people remained without discrimination on those accounts.  Bobby couldn't imagine a world where walls were the most important things in his life, yet they seemed to keep the city strangely calm, despite the fact that sentry guns often shot down attack planes or fleets of tanks run by small militias of humans who though that the F.O.H. was working too slowly.

                Despite the fact that it was a peaceful city, there was a most definite crime problem.  The anarchists, who were vastly predominant, protested the formation of a government, which prevented the formation of a police force.  All hospitals were strictly voluntary, and often the doctors were training future doctors, due to the lack of schools, so surgery was sometimes performed by unqualified surgeons.  There were only two mutants in the city that could heal others, and they were completely swamped at all times.

                There were many people who would see something like that as a weakness, but better healthcare would mean a larger population, thus the walls would have to be expanded upon more quickly, and thus be less effective.  Although Bobby didn't see why that was such a bad thing.  If the walls were ever brought down, there would still be eighteen million mutants inside to deal with, most of them with at least minimal combat experience, citing that getting to the city was quite a chore.  The F.O.H. had the entire city surrounded, at about ten miles around the perimeter.  They had no problem letting the vigilantes wanting to destroy the city through their lines, but the mutants that tried to get through were usually to be shot.  Forge had tried to organize forces to wipe out the line, and although they were successful, many of the force ended up dead, and there were plenty of soldiers waiting to take the place.  The only time that the city had a chance of getting rid of many of them was when a new wall was activated.  The defenses immediately destroyed anything within that ten miles radius that wasn't within thirty feet of a mutant.  Thus, when a new wall was activated, the wall immediately attacked the soldiers still standing near the former border.  Within minutes, the soldiers had retreated the half-mile, which was the distance between all of the walls (making for a total of about three-hundred and fifty walls), but the F.O.H. was not without heavy losses by the time this happened.  For some reason, there always seemed to be an attack on a F.O.H. base when the walls were activated.  Only Bobby and the others on Trent's team knew that Dominic was somehow aware of the times when the wall were activated, and always launched a huge attack as it was about to happen.  Since he launched "huge" attacks regularly, the F.O.H. stopped retreating the Seattle Perimeter forces every time an attack was made, and without satellite reconnaissance, they had no way of telling themselves.  How Dominic knew was a closely guarded secret, but Bobby was sure that nobody in the city wanted anything to do with the Reign family in general.

                Very few people had kept themselves from the current events of the world as Kurt had.  Kurt had kept himself doing only two things: living and working.  The only news channels belonged to the government, and the real information was still classified.  Bobby and Piotr found it almost a little irritating explaining to him things almost all mutants know.  They eventually came to the realization that he knew little more than the typical human knew.  The majority of the non-mutant public only knew that: Xavier and some other nameless super-powerful mutant were dueling; Seattle was full of a bunch of blood-thirsty mutants; every human was perfectly safe; Wolverine was no longer on the loose; and that the F.O.H. had everything important under control.  Most of them were lies: Wolverine was very-much on the loose; Trent just managed to round him up to train and do missions every once in a while.

                Bobby started to reach the turning point of the city.  Most of the buildings on the outside were workshops to develop parts for the encompassing wall or minor residences.  About half-way to the center of the city was where the apartment buildings starting mixing in with nightclubs.  The city was truly circular; the sectors were usually confined between a pair of walls.  Unofficial regions were divided like a target would be.  The "Red-Light District" was a thin ring right in the middle of the wall and Forge's Lab: the geographical center of the city.

                Trent had informed him that she would most-likely be toward the center of the city, but Bobby decided to save tracking the girl until the next day.  Since Trent didn't tell Bobby exactly where the girl was, like he had with Wolverine and Kurt, there was a bit of research to be done.  He had to get to a place that had a computer in it and, to a lesser extent, a phone with a connection to the outside world.  Bobby wouldn't be able to find these things in the midst of brothels, bars, casinos, and nightclubs.  He went into the center of the city.  Aside from the homes and offices of many influential "leaders" of Seattle, there were many very classy hotels.  Bobby was smart enough to bring along about ten grand in cash, knowing fully that many things were very expensive.  Still, he hoped he wasn't going to be in the city long enough to spend all of it.  In fact, he knew that a lot of the places in the city didn't use American currency.  Mostly because it was purely symbolic, but also to distance the city from the Friends of Humanity.  The businesses of the inner-city, however, had no problem accepting "foreign" currency.

                All of the parking garages extended far underground, as did the hotel rooms themselves.  Surface room was sparse far into the city.  The first floor of the hotel was actually twelve stories underground, making the lobby the thirteenth floor, so as to hold to the superstition of not having any rooms on the thirteenth floor of a hotel.  The parking garage went down over twenty stories, and the majority of the levels were stuffed with cars, forcing Bobby to go down fourteen flights of spirals before reaching a level he could park in.  He nearly hit the car beside his parking space due to his dizziness.

                The elevator to the Lobby was surprisingly long.  The elevator stopped several times to let others on.  Upon spotting the only occupant, everyone got wide-eyed and walked over to another elevator.  Bobby got the impression that not only had the word gotten around within the past thirty minutes, but his face had been shown on every screen in the city.  Once, he reached the lobby, he found that he was right.  Bobby found that his rotating visage was on a tremendous screen, his biography printing itself over and over underneath his head.

                One by one, all of the people on the room turned to look at him, both star-struck and distrusting.  Bobby simply smirked and walked up to the counter.  "I'm looking for a suite.  I don't care about price."

                "Of course," the young woman said.  She seemed calm, but her hands were shaking slightly as she gave him the key.  Bobby wondered both what they had been saying about him on the television, and what the people were just elaborating in their mind.  He had room 5702: the forty-fifth floor above ground.  Bobby deduced from what he saw of the hotel from the outside that he was on the upper levels if not the top floor.  "We'll send you the rate of charge tomorrow.  Will you be staying more than one night?"

                "Maybe, but not if everything goes according to plan."

                "The elevators are just behind that wall."  Bobby saw as he turned around to go behind that wall that the lobby had all but emptied.  He was too tired to think about why he was so feared.  He simply punched the "57" button: finding that it was in fact the top floor.  Again, Bobby remained alone the entire ride up, even though the elevator stopped almost every other floor.

                Once on his floor, Bobby was surprised to find only two doors: one on each side of the hallway, and an abandoned concierge desk at the end.  On the left, was 5701, on the right: 5702.  The skylight in his gigantic room proved that he was on the top floor.  He briefly swept the room, making sure he wasn't being monitored.  After searching enough to assure that there were no cameras in his room, he decided to simply fall asleep.  He didn't care about audio bugs; there was nothing they could determine from his silence.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kitty sat by Dominic's bed, waiting for him to wake up.  She wasn't worried about him in any manner.  She'd seen him in much worse condition, but she'd never actually seen it happen, and she especially never thought Trent would do something of the sort to his own brother, though the things that she heard about Trent during her months as a spy weren't too flattering, and after thinking about some of them, Kitty couldn't say whether or not those things were false.  Dominic, though, was actually very well respected for his abilities and his use of them, as were most of the Reigns, but that didn't mean that they thought much else of them.  Only Trent raised the unmitigated hatred among the troops of Xavier, and although the complaints were the same for both him and his brothers, he was simply worse, for no apparent reason.

                As soon as she left his bedside to get a drink was, of course, the time that Dominic awoke.  Hank didn't bother actually walking over to Dominic, just calling out: "Very nice to see you awake.  If you have any unexpected pain, which I doubt, feel free to come down."

                "Thanks, Hank," Dominic said.  Kitty quickly finished her water and hurried over to help him walk.  Once they exited the infirmary, Dominic was insistent that he walk on his own.

                "I know you'll be fine, but you need all the rest you can get, including accepting help," Kitty resumed helping him walk, but soon thought better of it.  She simply grabbed him, phased them both up to their bedroom, and placed him, sitting, on the bed.  This took a few minutes off of their trip from the lower levels to the second floor.  Dominic did not offer any resistance or show any surprise at what she did.

                "Thanks for the help," he said in a raspy voice.  Kitty couldn't help but smile.  "What?"

                "I've just never seen you this weak before, it's interesting.  You always project your strengths; always; and now… it's just the opposite."

                "I'm glad you're enjoying my pain," he said through a laugh.

                "You know I felt every one of those hits as much as you did," she pushed his chest lightly to have him lay down.  She lay down beside him, pressing her body up against his, and draping her arm over his chest.  "I just don't have to live with the after-effects."  Dominic laughed.  "By the way, you told me Trent used the same fighting style that he taught us.  What the hell did he use yesterday?"

                "I have no idea, but there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it.  Probably just using me to act out years of suppressed anger."

                "What anger?  Everything he's wanted to do since he was a toddler he's been able to do."

                "Well, somewhere, buried deeper than his sense of humor, is where he's bottled up all of his… annoyance from unsatisfying victories."  Dominic could see the confusion on her face once she stopped giggling from the sense of humor comment, so he decided to elaborate.  "Can you imagine having all of that power, and then having to direct it at one individual, who has no chance of fighting back?  The man controls gravity: that alone puts him on the top tier of the universe.  But he's developed it to a point where he can do damn near anything.  He could rip Earth apart with the strain needed for us to blink, and he's forced to face down opponents who are in the frail human body.

                "Imagine someone does something to piss you off enough for you to want to kill them, and you have that… heaviness of pure anger on your heart, and you kill them by blinking your eyes: not after a hard fought battle or some incredibly tiring act: after doing nothing but blinking, nothing to release that heaviness on your heart.  Trent has to do that constantly, _and live with the knowledge that in order to relieve that anger, he'd have to rip the galaxy apart.  So he's forced to push it down inside of himself, only letting it out in very limited amounts, in very limited ways."  Dominic had pretty much quoted what his father had told him on his deathbed, when he asked why Trent acted the way he did._

                "Such as beating the shit out of his little brother," she said questioningly.  "I think it sounds a lot like celebrities telling all of the normal people out there how hard fame can be."

                "Fame is hard.  Right now, Bobby's in Seattle, right?"  Kitty nodded.  "Well, most mutants and a lot of humans have seen that video of him getting shot in the back."  The video had been released to show off the "hero" of the F.O.H. special forces, who was nothing more than a very good sniper, who had taken out many mutants while sleeping or visiting their families, often taking out the families in the process.  "Imagine having to go to Seattle, where most everyone hates Trent, and act as his representative to chase down someone that everyone will want to hide from the evils of my family."

                "The evils of your family?  You mean Andy and Frank," Kitty asked sarcastically.

                "You've met Andy?"  He said, then shook off the change of subject, offering his own instead.  "Why do you keep shrugging off everything I'm saying?"

                "I'll admit that Trent seems to be the only one who had the balls to think his stance on the human-mutant crisis through and then actually bring it to life, but you have to realize that the only reasons that I'm still here are because: Trent's the only option people with our stance have, he's currently the only one with the resources and power to carry out his beliefs, and," she leaned in close to him, "because you're here."

                Dominic had never known Kitty to harbor such views.  "Your opinions of Trent seemed to have changed.  Can I ask why?"

                "I'm just starting to question everything I see, just like he taught us."

                "What, specifically, are you beginning to question?"

                "Where he was after Moira died, and why, after he came back, he doesn't come down to eat with us anymore, he never seems to go to sleep, why he's gone on his first recruitment kick in over four years, and why the hell he's spending so much time in Moscow; where, I may remind you, your father is buried."  Her voice had risen considerably, and now she stopped to catch her breath.  "I know that Piotr also left for a while, but at least after he came back, he still acted like a normal, grieving husband.  Once Trent came back, he started acting way too much Xavier, only without the temper.  I'm beginning to wonder whether or not he even cares about any of us," she was referring to her generation of recruits, "anymore.  He sends Bobby, who is severely injured, into a city full of people that will blame him if anything even remotely troubling happens; he has completely detached himself from his friendship with Emma, who used to be the only person he would relate to; he hasn't been giving you anything important, except for saving our asses to go get the Darkholmes; Piotr hasn't left the mansion in months, except for training exercises he doesn't need; and I'm pretty sure the only reason he gave me that spy position was to get me away from him, or you… or both for eight months."

                Dominic knew that Trent didn't want him to get too attached to anyone, and he and Kitty had been attached many times for many nights in a row since he got back.  "There's no reason for him to want to separate us.  The only reason he chose you to be the spy was because were the only one who could pull it off.  You know that.  After spending the better part of a year listening to what they have to say about him, I'd probably be questioning his methods, too."

                "Dominic, I was questioning these things almost as soon as he recruited me.  They did say a lot of things that were simply untrue, but a lot of points about Trent were raised that makes me question the things he says sometimes.  Haven't you ever wandered why he always says: 'Our goal is to bring about a world that's supposed to be.'  Then he goes on about how mutants and humans have no real reason to fight.  He has never outright said that our goal is to get rid of Xavier and the F.O.H., or to make them see that fighting is pointless.  He always puts it in those terms exactly.  You can't tell me that you've never noticed that."  Dominic knew very well why he always used those terms, but he didn't say anything.  "You need to get some more sleep."  With that, she simply got up off of the bed, and walked out of the room.  It wasn't long before Dominic banished his reawakened doubts about Trent's plans and went back to his healing sleep.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                It happened every time that Bobby awoke.  He was completely unable to move his legs, or even feel them.  He was able to sit up though, and after shaking them for a minute or two, he had regained control of his lower appendages.  Hank had been unable to offer an explanation for this, and acted strangely whenever asked to.  Bobby figured Hank was a bit sensitive when he didn't understand something medical.  He certainly got testy when he was working on some genetic studies and couldn't get the results he wanted.

                He flipped through the small number of channels on his television, seeing that either he was being shown entering the city or the hotel, or Trent was being discussed in all of his supposed evil glory.  He was beginning to hope that as soon as he showed his face to her that she'd adamantly refuse so he could just get home.

                Upon leaving his hotel, that wish gained in strength.  Not only was everyone staring at him, but there seemed to be gangs that would never find themselves near the center had gathered to plot the demise of Trent's agent in the city.  It was surprising to Bobby actually seeing the outcropping of hatred for everything that Trent hadn't revealed about himself.  They had no idea what Trent's plans were, or why he was hesitating in carrying it out, but they were sure that the reason made Trent deserving of swift eradication.

                Once Bobby got through the first wall, he abandoned his car, it gathered too much attention.  He decided to walk through the alleys, which had just a few people in them, and none of them had televisions. Walking through the alleys, though, got him no closer to finding the girl.  Sooner or later, he was going to have to face the maddening gangs.

                "Sooner," a voice said behind him.  It was female, a hint of an accent, but the rasp and the briefness of the vocalization made the accent untraceable.  He turned, seeing the figure sitting, huddled against a corner.  She wasn't hiding or in the shadows, though her face was fully covered by a hood on a huge, tattered coat.  Bobby wondered how he'd missed her when he had walked by.

                "Where did you come from," Bobby asked in a way reminding the woman of how people talked to lost puppies.

                "You're worried about the gang elements finding you before you find the girl?"  He could tell she was stressing to hide her accent.

                "Not so much worried as prepared.  I know it's going to happen."  He swiveled around her, as if she preferred distance over anonymity.  He knew that wasn't true, but it was an instinct.

                "You don't understand.  She is a gang element.  She leads a _gang in this city that is very similar to the __gang you belong to."_

                Bobby finally got to a position where he was able to see the bottom half of her face.  "You knew what I was thinking earlier," he changed the subject.  "There are only two women I can think of…" he trailed off as a smile crept across her face.  The smile was quite unmistakable, and the lock of blonde hair gave away, without a doubt, who this _stranger was.  "Betsy?"_

                She lost her façade and leapt at him, embracing him in a tight hug.  He was slightly confused: they had never been too good of friends while she was working for Trent.  She released Bobby.  "Sorry, it's just been so long since I've seen any of the team."

                "It would have been a lot sooner if we had known you were alive.  Hell, the last I saw of you was your decapitated body being thrown into a burning building.  I'm rather impressed you survived, by the way."

                "It was fake," she said, mocking an informative tone.  "Trent's had me keeping an eye on your target girl for the past three years.  You didn't think he'd let you loose in here with no help or information, do you."

                Bobby smirked.  It was almost funny how little Trent trusted his other recruits to know certain truths.  The team had also had no idea where Kitty had been until Dominic told them that he saw her on one of his raids of the base she was in.  "Three years?  Did he tell you that when you took the job?  I couldn't imagine being away from the team that long."

                "Not to mention missing Moira's funeral," Betsy said, sounding defeated.

                "Well, at least you weren't on the team when Frank took over."

                "What?  And you're all still alive."

                "After the funeral, Trent and Piotr disappeared.  Piotr left Dominic and Kitty with Richard, who was one year old at the time."

                "Really?  How long were they gone?"

                "Piotr was only gone about three months, and took over for Frank when he came back.  Trent was gone for about eighteen months.  We kept an eye on Piotr.  We generally knew where he was.  Trent, though… I doubt he was even on the planet.  When he came back, he was a different person.  Talks less, reads more.  He's barely spending any time at the mansion, and he beat the living hell out of Dominic the other day while sparring."

                "So he's snapped, basically?"

                "I wouldn't say that.  That would involve a lack of stability.  He's still pretty stable, and he certainly seems to be following through on plans, since it seems you've known I'd be coming, and that I'd have no information."

                "They have a few psychics at the borders.  If you had come in here with actual knowledge of her, they'd know immediately."

                "Who are _they_ and why would they try to stop me?"

                "Forge, for one.  He's asked Trent for help for years, without any response, except: 'Patience.'  Needless to say, Forge didn't take too kindly to that.  All of the others would be lead by the random gangs lead by some of the people Trent told were too weak to serve any purpose, then shooed them away here."  The last few words were slowed down as she looked at the injured, weakened Bobby.  "I'm sure you're here for better reasons."

                Bobby sighed.  "What can you tell me about her?"

                "Oh, she's… very unique.  Her power isn't tremendous, though it's nothing to laugh at.  I'm pretty sure Trent's only interested in her leadership abilities, though I don't know why.  She's good, but not as good as Dominic.  So, if he ever decided to leave for another reason, I don't see why he'd choose her."

                "Anything else?"

                "She's young, as you probably deduced from the photo: just turned eighteen, but she's in charge of some people that go well into their forties."

                "Trent was leading us back when he was fifteen.  Maybe he sees some of himself in her."

                Betsy giggled.  "Not hardly.  Jubilation goes to parties just as often as Trent frowns."

                "Well, then, why do you think I'm here to recruit her?"

                "Knowing Trent, which I'm not sure I do anymore, I'd say she's just a tool.  If he was going after the real power-houses, he'd have you recruit some of the people on Jubilee's team."

                "That might be what he's after.  He might want to use her as a liaison to reduce the amount of trips."

                "Then why would I have spent the last four years here?  There's something he wants with her."

                Bobby sighed.  "I guess it doesn't matter.  I'll just do what I was sent here to do.  I've got to try and convince her to join the team, for whatever reason.  I guess it's going to be a lot easier to get to her now."

                "Should be.  Don't expect her to be too responsive, though."

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Kurt followed Trent's advice: he'd started small.  He would look at a tree a short distance away, and then imagine teleporting there, even starting the process of teleporting, but he didn't follow through.  It took him hours before he could take what he used to not even think about and bring it to the forefront.  After almost half of a day, he was able to sense everything about a limb of a tree.  He could _see it from all sides, but it didn't feel like seeing.  He was able to tell how much it weighed, how thick it was; basically everything about it.  Shortly after, he decided to expand on the amount of area he could "see".  He would work on how far away from himself he could see afterward.  By the end of the day, he was able to see about thirty trees.  He had to focus, though, to get the same level of detail that he had with the branch.  Still, this new aspect of his power thrilled Kurt._

                Kitty or Piotr would come out every now and then to give him food, and when night came, bedding.  He didn't sleep very long, though.  For some reason, performing Trent's task now seemed like a game.  By the end of the second day, Kurt was able to reach his vision to New York City, and he was also able to see most of it.  He'd pushed himself too hard, though, and slept more than twelve hours that night.

                "Are you okay, Kurt," a female voice awoke him.  It was Emma.

                "Fine.  Just tired."  He answered, taking a brief moment to get used to the sun.

                "How is it coming?"

                "Faster than I thought."

                "It always does.  Everyone's surprised what can happen when advancement becomes their whole life.  From what I've heard, though, your assignment is quite a bit more difficult than most."

                "Vhat did the others have to do?"

                "Let me see: Bobby had to make a giant ice statue of himself; Piotr had to run across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, and meet Trent in London; Kitty had to stay in her phase form for a month, while being a short-term spy in the F.O.H.; and Betsy, before your time, had to siphon away some of Jean Grey's powers, and use them to go to the moon and back.  We were all surprised when she came back.  That was the hardest one up until you."

                "Vhat I am doing is nothing compared to going to the moon."

                "Oh?  You're being forced to utilize a completely new aspect of your power to find something that is probably very small on the other side of the planet in the middle of a well-populated area.  At least Betsy had some practice in taking people's powers.  Are you even close to being able to detect Moscow?"

                "I can see a very large area, but I can't see things that are too far away."

                "How much longer do you think it will be," she asked him, finally placing down the breakfast, or lunch, that she had brought out to him.

                "It might be a few days."

                "Good luck, then," she said, walking back toward the mansion.

                "Vait," he called.  She turned to face him.  "You didn't tell me vhat you had to do."

                "I…" she looked to the sky to find the words, "…I had to change somebody's mind."

                "Is that it," he asked.

                "It was about something relatively important, for a relatively long amount of time."

                "Alright," Kurt said, realizing he wasn't going to be getting any specifics out of her.  He stood up and tried to count the number of people in the Empire State Building.  After that, he'd try to gain range instead of area.  With any luck, he'd be done before the week was out.  He hoped the weather held.

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Bobby was tired.  Every day, the young Jubilee would promise him a moment of her time to talk, and she'd always manage to weasel her way out of it.  In return for her allusiveness, he helped her team do a few espionage missions against the ring of F.O.H. outside the city.  Bobby didn't find the relationship very rewarding.

                He passed through the door, turning it to ice and traveling the short distance through it, to Jubilee's room.  There, oblivious to the other man in the room, stood a young man that was a probationary member of Jubilee's team.  He apparently wanted to curry favor with Jubilee by giving her a night she wouldn't forget for a week.  He missed the sounds made by Bobby's entrance because of his frantic hopping, and he blocked his own vision of the door by the shirt he was desperately trying to get off.  Once the shirt was off, though, he nearly fell over at the shock of seeing the larger man stalking towards him.

                "Hey," they boy said.  "Hey!" he repeated once Bobby grabbed his arm and tossed him into the hall.  Bobby was too tired to deal with the formalities of telling him to get the hell out.  All of the team had seen what Bobby was capable of, even the probationary members, so the young man didn't contend with his removal, though he looked as though his life-dream had just been ripped apart.

                Jubilee's room was nice: a far cry from the casino it was built under.  The rest of the team stayed in the hotel on the upper floors.  Bobby still stayed at the penthouse suite he had since first arriving in Seattle five days beforehand.  The lack of windows made the room absolutely dark.  Bobby remembered seeing a chair in the far corner a few days beforehand, and found his way to it around the bed.  Soon, the only light source was the light emanating from the bathroom Jubilee walked out of, stark naked.  She seemed slightly confused at the lighting and the lack of anyone charging her from the bed.

                She sparked a light in her hand to illuminate the room.  She quickly stifled the firework once she saw Bobby.  "What the hell are you doing in here?!"

                "It's time for our talk.  You can't avoid me forever."  The light flicked back on, with Jubilee finishing tying her robe.  Bobby was a bit disappointed despite himself.

                "I'm not joining Reign's team.  Talk over."

                "He won't let me get away with that."

                "He doesn't have to know!"

                "He already does.  He knows where we are, what we're doing and what we're saying.  Everything that anyone does on this planet is monitored by him."

                "Then what the hell am I?"

                "I don't know, but I follow his orders."

                "Congratulations.  You're a tool."

                "I'd be a dead tool twenty times by now if it weren't for Trent, even more for the rest of the team."

                "You're life would never have been in danger if it weren't for him," she scoffed back.

                "I'm a mutant: Critical Priority level.  If it weren't for Trent, the F.O.H. would have killed me eight years ago."

                "What the hell does 'critical priority level' mean?"

                "The F.O.H. defines all of the mutants they identify by a ranking system.  The lowest is 'Base level' then 'Normal level,' 'Concern level,' and lastly 'Critical level.'  They throw 'priority' in there if the mutants commit a 'crime' against the F.O.H. or are ever called in by a human."

                "What would I be," she asked in a childlike tone.  She seemed to have forgotten her ruined liaison, and even her staunch objection to the conversation.

                "Probably a Concern Priority."

                "And Trent?  Or Xavier?"

                "They're not on the same scale.  People like Scott Summers and Piotr Rasputin and Wolverine are on 'World Concern level.'  Magneto and Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe are the only three on 'World Menace level.'  Trent and Charles, though, are even above that scale.  They both fall under the category of 'Super Mutants.'  In fact, the entire Reign family is made up of Super Mutants.  Dominic and Frank are the only ones that even come close to Xavier and Trent, though."

                "How many brothers does Trent have," she asked, again sounding as though the five minutes beforehand had never happened.

                "I didn't come in here to talk about Trent's family."

                "Do you expect me to make an uneducated decision?"

                "I thought you'd already made your decision."

                "I thought you had orders to follow."

                Bobby sighed.  "Seven: Dominic, Andy, Frank, Harold, Lewis, George, and Leo," Bobby listed off quickly from memory.  "Trent and Dominic are fraternal twins, Andy and Frank are identical.  The rest are fraternal quadruplets."

                "Damn," Jubilee said.

                "Dominic once told me that their father was a geneticist.  I think he might have had a hand in that.  The man was big on possessing strength, and I think he wanted as many sons as possible to achieve that."

                "I don't guess he has any sisters, then."

                "One: Andrea."

                "What happened to her?"

                "After Trent left Xavier's fold, Charles quickly grabbed any family member he could.  Andrea happened to be out and about that day.  Xavier captured her, erased her memory, and renamed her, making her believe she was his daughter.  He even tricked all of his other children into believing that she was their sister."

                "What's her name now?"

                "Melissa."

______________________________________________________________________________________

                "Mister Forge," the intercom projected into the man's workshop.

                "Yes," he called back.

                "Dr. Linkut is here to see you."

                "Send him in."  Shortly thereafter, an elderly man walked into the cluttered workshop, which was filled with a variety of scrap-metal and junker machines.  "Is something the matter with Mr. Drake?  Has he been getting into any ill activities that one of my associates couldn't have taken note of?"

                The old man spoke, "I know you're busy, Mr. Forge, but I have some very interesting findings for you."

                "And they are?"

                "Well, we've seldom been able to get close enough to scan Mr. Drake without him noticing and freezing our equipment.  Just last night, he seemed to be having a heated debate with… Jubilation Lee, who we have determined to be his target, and didn't seem to notice the scans.  We had some very interesting results."

                "What do you mean?"

                "You are aware of Mr. Drake's run-in with the F.O.H. assassin?"

                "Of course."

                "That shot hit him in the spine.  The specific place it hit would cause complete paralysis from the waist down.  The only way to heal completely from such an injury is a stasis tank."

                "There's only one of those, and we have it."

                "I'm aware, sir.  Since it hadn't been used in a long time, I went to check on whether or not Mr. Reign had stolen it somehow, but it hasn't been moved since it was put there."

                "So, how has Drake healed?"

                "He hasn't."

                "Excuse me?"

                "His injury hasn't gotten any better; if anything, it's gotten worse.  He is still completely paralyzed from the waist down."

                "I've seen the footage of him in the city.  He's been walking almost everywhere."

                "Further scans show a considerable amount of unnatural gravitational shifts encompassing Drake's entire lower body."

                "Reign's been moving the man's legs?"

                "Not only that.  Drake is _feeling_ his legs.  Natural chemicals are being forcefully produced and pushed through the man's body, giving him an unnatural sense of touch.  The amount of minute and articulate control needed is incalculable."

                "How incalculable?"

                "I don't think we have a computer that powerful, nor will we for decades."

                "Why give him feeling," the question suddenly popped itself into Forge's head.

                "That question came up.  The only reason we can think of is that Drake doesn't know he's paralyzed.  Reign is lying to him."

                "How does Reign know what Drake's about to do?"

                The doctor took a second to think about that.  "He'd probably just need the assistance of a telepath."

______________________________________________________________________________________

                Emma walked into the room that was somewhat of an office, but mostly a library.  Trent was on the other side of the room, looking out the window at the night sky.  His jacket was off, allowing his hair to hang free.  "What is it that you want," he asked, not bothering welcoming her.

                "I was thinking-"

                "Hold on," Trent interrupted her.  Shortly after, a puff of smoke appeared just behind Trent.

                "It's Captain America's shield, isn't it?"

                "Very good.  Now go get it."

                "No need," Kurt said.  The shield appeared in Kurt's hand, while Kurt didn't flinch.  The familiar scent of brimstone filled the room.

                "Interesting," Trent said.  The shield floated out of Kurt's hands and hung itself on the wall, where a space had already been cleared for it.  "You have, by far, completed your task more easily and quickly than anybody else I have ever trained, and it was one of the harder ones.  It's also very impressive that you've managed to learn an even more useful ability, though not asked.  If only the other recruits had the same resolve," he looked at Emma.  He turned back to Kurt.  "You have a mission that begins tomorrow.  Get some rest."

                "Gladly," Kurt said before disappearing with a very happy look on his face.

                "What is it that you wanted," Trent faced the window again.

                "I was thinking it would be easier for you to do what you have to do next if I cease my influence over Bobby."

                "So, you're just making things easier for me?  How polite."

                She knew Trent wouldn't buy that.  "I can't do this anymore.  It's just cruel to keep it up at this point.  I haven't been learning _anything_ from keeping it going for so long.  And he…"

                "Fine."  Emma stopped cold.  She'd never been able to argue Trent out of something in less than an hour.  "I'll still need your help in keeping Bobby walking, but you're right.  There's no need to keep him loving you."

                "Of course, I'll help you keep him walking.  When should I cut off-"

                "As soon as you feel necessary."

                That morning, for the first time in a long time, Bobby didn't awake thinking about his wife.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Next Chapter: Jubilee


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